Testing Positive for Malaria
24th July 2006
I tested positive for malaria. Some of you might be of the
mistaken belief that this means I have malaria. Not quite
the same thing.
One day, just for a laugh, I went to get tested for malaria despite
presenting no symptoms. I returned a positive test to the surprise
of no one.
Dr. Sam - the local malaria tester - has
famously only ever returned one negative test for local
volunteers. He gets a bit of slack for this, but he is a top guy.
One wise volunteer pointed out that we all probably have a little bit
of malaria in our system and our anti-malarial medication is keeping it
at bay.
Travel books, doctors and websites all stress the need to protect
yourself from malaria. They all say that you should:
- Drench yourself in bug spray many times a day
I rarely do this.
- Sleep under a mosquito net
When sleeping under a mosquito net you should ensure that no part of
your body is touching it and that the net is completely tucked into
your bed.
I seldom tuck my net in. You'd think I learnt my lesson from
the cockroach/underpants
incident. I haven't.
- Take anti-malarial medication
This I do religiously.
I figured you'd be pretty much dead if you got malaria. Why
else would you go to such extreme measures to avoid getting it?
Turns out that it is not such a big deal if you get it, as long as
you have access to the take-these-when-you-get-malaria drugs.
These are in plentiful supply on camp and they cost about $US1.
Erin,
the former GVN rep, had it three times over a four month period.
Four volunteers had malaria while I was on camp.
One poor girl had a bacterial infection on
top of her malaria.
Other Funky Diseases
Here is a list of other diseases that volunteers have had. I'm
not going to mention any names just in case their parents freak out.
-
Cerebral Malaria
As much fun as it sounds. Untreated cerebral malaria is
very dangerous and often puts the sufferer into a coma. Death
is also an unwanted side-affect.
Cerebral Malaria also causes the sufferer to hallucinate. The
volunteer on camp experienced the following:
-
Saw dead cats hanging from trees.
-
Would find himself surrounded by power lines.
-
Saw faces in his mosquito net.
-
Would feel bugs crawling all over his
body.
Scary stuff. He said that the bugs
were the worst. He knew that the bugs weren't really there,
but they itched and tickled nevertheless. The scariest part of
the whole episode was when he attempted to rip off his shirt to get
to the bugs.
I was talking to Erin - the
GVN rep - about whether or not we should send him home. I
convinced her that we should. He convinced her to give him one
more day, which she did. Turned out to be good decision as he
showed dramatic improvements the next day. He went on to make
a full discovery.
-
Scabies
Scabies are little parasites that get under your skin and are damn
itchy. They congregate on your hands, feet and buttocks (tee
hee). Three volunteers came down with scabies. We
suspect they all caught it from one door
kid who was just covered in scabies.
If you are so inclined, then here is a
picture of a scabies infected foot for you to peruse.
The scabies infected volunteers would often bath their feet in hot
water to alleviate the itching.
-
Constipation and Diarrhea
*Shrugs* Welcome to the third world.
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(c)
2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to
link to this page. Heck, you can even copy stuff from here if you
want. Just make sure you sight me as a reference.
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