Good or bad ? Now I know its good for the health side of things for these people in the short term but what about long term. More people less food , water , problems with sanitation .
Peter are you talking about malaria prophylaxis to prevent malaria because as far as I know there isn't a vaccine? If you are talking about prophylaxis then your first statement is not correct. Malaria prophylaxis, for starters, are for short term use only. They are extremely hard on the body and should not be taken long term. The inhabitants of malaria areas generally don't take them in my experience. It is only visitors, generally from first world countries, that take them on the bad advice of the WHO. I have lived and worked in malaria areas for at least a decade. I'm in one right now, Angola to be precise. I have spoken to many Doctors and medical people about this subject and went out with a university student who was doing her PHD in malaria and have come to the following conclusions; 1. Most people that take prophylaxis suffer some kind of reaction to the drug, none of which are pleasant and the reason you cannot take them long term. They particularly damage the liver. 2. They do not guaranty that you won't get malaria, in fact their prevention success rate is pretty bad. I don't know the numbers but I wouldn't put it at much better than 50%. 3. If you get malaria whilst taking the prophylaxis then the ability to test you for it is seriously compromised. The prophylaxis very effectively masks, not only the initial symptoms but also the parasites in the test. The way malaria works is like this. It is a parasite that starts off as a few individuals which after a certain time doubles. After a further period (about 12 hours or so) they double again and so on. Each of these events is accompanied by symptoms in the patient, the most common a fever, followed by feeling fine. The first few events are usually not noticed by the patient but as the number of parasites increase so to do the symptoms, however for the patient, on prophylaxis, these symptoms are masked very well for the first few days. The patient only starts to exhibit symptoms once they are quite ill and then quite often test negative. 4. Once a positive test is finally returned then the next problem arises. The parasite is a lot harder to kill. This is because the treatment is just a larger dose of the same or a different prophylaxis and the parasite was already strong enough to get past that in the first place. Quite often it is impossible to treat and the patient dies. 5. Usually the malaria that a prophylaxis taking patient catches is one of the more serious strains which are more life threatening. Malaria is a very serious life threatening disease. It kills more people in Africa than anything else. I'm a helicopter pilot and for a few years I used to fly medical rescue within Africa and I flew a lot of people suffering from malaria, all of them had taken prophylaxis and quite a lot of them died. The ones that died usually died within 3 days of realizing they were sick. From my experience my answers to visiting a malaria area are; 1. Don't take prophylaxis. 2. Know the symptoms,the most common is thinking you may have flu. 3. If you experience any of the symptoms get tested immediately. In fact if you are sick with anything get tested. It is cheap and easy to do in these places but very hard in places like the UK. The secret is to get treated early in the process. The earlier the better chance for a complete recovery. 4. You can get malaria a long time, months even, after you get back from a malaria area so if you get any of the symptoms tell your Dr. where you have been and that they must test you for malaria. 5. Don't be an idiot, wear long sleeves and pants with shoes in the evening and night. I know it is hot but rather hot than dead. Spray yourself with a good repellant religiously. 6. Avoid mosquito infested areas. 7. Sleep under a mozi net and preferably in an aircond room with mozi screens. 8. Bomb the room with insect spray in the evening. 9. Burn mozi coils or the like at night. 10. Be anal about not getting bitten. It is the only way to guarantee that you don't get malaria and a number of other shit diseases that these bastards carry. So I guess my answer to your question is BAD.
Started taking them and quinine when living in Kenya but the locals said not to bother after we started getting headaches n dizzy spells n advised drinking gin n tonic so we did n never caught anything in the 2.5 years we lived there. lots of hangovers tho!
the nat that gives you malaria hatches from water. more people less water, less water less malaria. am i a genius or what. my copper mate was brought up on some mineral deposit in the middle of the pacific, he caught malaria and recons he is paying the price now. certainly affected his mind when he chose his career. :tongue:
I did a couple of trips (jobs) in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea and was told that Exxon Mobile offered to eradicate Malaria but the president said no as it was population control it was the only place I took it, but did mess up the beer drinking
We all live in a risk society. We immunise all children against polio, despite the fact that only a few of the children born each year will contract it. If the number was 1 in 5000 then for every child successfully immunised against polio 4999 immunisations would be wasted. It's all about balancing risk and benefits
Thanks Peter. They say 'halving malaria cases in young children' which pretty much agrees with my guesstermate in No. 2 above so doesn't sound much more effective than what we have now, unless it's a once off vaccine? Still a bit hit and miss though.
