My 3 cents on malaria and malaria tabs etc,

I lived throughout Eastern Africa for many years incl 18 months in Mozambique which has one of the worlds highest concentrations of cerebral malaria (which is the killer). I have had Malaria 4 times and on the first occasion I was using preventative measures (Larium) and when I got sick I made my way to the clinic in Maputo (which at the time was run by swiss / norwegian NGO's). I knew some of the folks who worked there as well as the swiss gal that ran the local blood bank and they all told me to get off of any medication as soon as possible. The reason is that all forms of malaria tabs etc work on the principle that most of the time they simply remove the symptoms and very often you still get malaria although you don't know it for some time. A mate of mine only knew he had malaria wgen he got his first relapse 18 months later! If you still contract malaria, the tabs can mask the existence of malaria thru the malaria antibodies they contain whereby testing will not be able to identify at all or the strain of malaria that you may have. Its well known that all malaria tabs are not effective at preventing strains of cerebral malaria (which is the real killer) so if you contracted a strain of cerebral malaria and you were on tabs, it could be that the symptoms would appear too late and any blood tests done would be 'muddied' by the presence of prophylactics so by the time they knew what was going on it would be too late. Far better to get sick early and to know you're sick and then get treated correctly from the outset as malaria is easlity treated once identified, its unpleasant but better than dying.
The best way to avoid getting malaria is to avoid getting bitten. This is not always practical or possible so its always good to identify where the best sources of malaria treatment are on your planned route before you leave, then stay off the tablets, and if you feel sick you can fall back to your 'malaria treatment plan' safe in the knowledge that your body has given you early warning that something's not right instead of being gagged by malaria tablets. Too often these days we cure the symptom when in fact symptons are good, they are our bodies telling us that there's a problem so trust it.

Cheers
AD