Got it - dealing with Malaria

[Lars]

Hi there,

I just got a positive test for malaria tropica yesterday.

While I am now treating it with Malarone, I just checked the HUBB for experiences of other travelling patients, found lots of threads about avoiding Malaria but few posts of people actually having had the disease. So maybe a thread with shared experiences could be useful:

In my case, the parasite was discovered rather accidentally: I had a test made because my mate was tested positive after having moderate fever. I was (am) feeling fine and had no symptoms apart from diarrhia (however that is spelled).

I called the ADAC and had an interesting dicussion with a doctor from the ADAC (great service - he called me back and discussed the disease in detail).

I found particularly interesting that from the persons being bitten by mosquitoes infected with malaria tropica, only 50 % develop an infection. Out of the infected persons, again only 50% develop symptoms of the disease. Only 0,5% have a potentially fatal crisis.

I do not want to play down the seriousness of the disease, but in my mind malaria tropicana was almost equalled with death, so I found these figures quite comforting.

According to German standards, infected persons with fever should present themselves to a hospital on the grounds that the situation can deteriorate that fast that it could be difficult to bring that person into hospital in time.

Only thing that is worrying me now is that, although the treatment will be finished after three days of taking Malarone and a final Malaria test to confirm there are now parasites left, the doctor gave me the advice to have myself malaria tested basically in every case I am feeling slightly unwell. That could be quite often.

Any experiences with reappearing Malaria after finished treatment?

Regards

Lars