REmember the Marines that were sent recently to Liberia?
12 of them have Malaria and another 21 have symptoms.
later in the article, it does mention what I thought as I saw the headline
.
what the hell happened?
I was wondering that myself.
I was think maybe it was due to some of the horrible side-effects of Mefloquine but that’s just one drug and there are other anti-malarials out there.
Very strange.
Maybe they got a resistant strain? Malaria prophylaxis isn’t what it used to be. The plasmodia are getting smart.
BTW, please pardon my ignorance, but is it fatal? Treatable? Etc.
Malaria? It’s sometimes fatal. I think the WHO reports there are something like 500 million cases each year, with only a million dying from it - most of them being folks with no reliable access to medical care.
The soldiers who got it are going to be in for an extremely unpleasant time, but they’ll be fine. There are a lot of treatments out there.
I was wondering the same thing and just chalked it up to foggy news copy. It is pretty standard procedure for soldiers (heck, even tourists) to get doses of anti-malarials before they go off into jungles and rainforests.
So what probably happened is that presumably the soldiers did get dosed, but that the news report couldn’t verify with certaintly that they did (or did not) by the time the story was released. So had to say something wishy-washy like “normally they get dosed before going.”
Elsewhere it’s written “details on the sick Marines’ conditions were not immediately available.” – so likely there’s just not enough info on what prophylactic drugs they did (or did not) take before deploying.
As coffeecat pointed out, there are some nasty strains that can sicken you despite proactive drugs.
Poor jarheads are going to feel pretty lousy for a bit.
My dad had to take mefloquine or some other bizarre drug when in Congo-Kinshasa covering the war there last year. It made him very wonky, and he eventually had to stop taking it because he simply couldn’t do his job. I don’t remember whether he took another antimalarial or not, but I assume so.
more have gotten sick. according to this, they’d all been issued the correct meds and instructions.
I understand that the precautions wouldn’t necessarily be 100% effective, but isn’t this an awfully large percentage that managed to contract it anyhow??? Pour quoi?? more effecient skeeters? more virulent strain? meds out of date? soldiers not following instructions??? administrational fuck up? (ie left hand issuing orders, right hand, well, busy)
It could be a little of everything. I think for the malaria drugs you need to be fairly precise in taking them otherwise they don’t work as well. I can see how soldiers might not keep up exactly on the regimen. Probably an admin fuck up in there, too, with maybe not enough malaria training. And more than likely, a bit of a change in the malaria itself.
It is my understanding that once you contract malaria, you’re a carrier forever. Is that correct?
If so, those guys can never leave the country again, since nobody will accept tourists, or soldiers, with communicable diseases.
CDC general fact sheet on malaria:
http://www.cdc.gov/travel/malinfo.htm
CDC fact sheet on malaria in West Africa:
Also, here’s an interesting article about cases of malaria spiking here after the return of veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars:
I got falciprium malaria in 68 after taking the “big orange pill” every Sunday. (The gunny came around with a big bottle and made sure.) When I was released from the hospital.they said that you never actually got rid of it but it was dormant in your system. Although they didn’t describe me as a “carrier”,I was cautioned not to “give blood”. One side affect they neglected to mention was that it makes you highly susceptible to infectious hepatytis.