Malaria in Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia

I'm off to Thailand in January and want to know the cost of anti Malarial
drugs in Thailand, particularly Malarone. Anyone know prices??? All I know
is its bloody expensive in the UK :-(

Thanks

"PrOnG" wrote in message
s.com...
I'm off to Thailand in January and want to know the cost of anti Malarial
drugs in Thailand, particularly Malarone. Anyone know prices??? All I know
is its bloody expensive in the UK :-(

Thanks

In all the years I have been travelling to SEA, I have never taken
anti-malarial drugs, nor will I ever take them. I have never known anyone to
catch it either. Yea it is expensive in London, but why waste your money on
something that makes you feel crappy.

"Davros" wrote in message
...

"PrOnG" wrote in message
s.com...
I'm off to Thailand in January and want to know the cost of anti
Malarial
drugs in Thailand, particularly Malarone. Anyone know prices??? All I
know
is its bloody expensive in the UK :-(

Thanks

In all the years I have been travelling to SEA, I have never taken
anti-malarial drugs, nor will I ever take them. I have never known anyone
to
catch it either. Yea it is expensive in London, but why waste your money
on
something that makes you feel crappy.


I took doxycycline and my skin became really sensitive to the sun..after a
day outside i felt that my skin was on fire all night...so I stopped taking
it, my skin went back to normal and I didn't catch malaria.

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 10:24:43 +0000 (UTC), "Davros"
wrote:

In all the years I have been travelling to SEA, I have never taken
anti-malarial drugs, nor will I ever take them. I have never known anyone to
catch it either. Yea it is expensive in London, but why waste your money on
something that makes you feel crappy.

It's been a few years, but just before I got to Nias (island off the
coast of Sumatra,) a surfer caught malaria at Lagundi Bay and died
before he could get treatment.

I've had malaria twice (in the Sudan.) It's the closest I've ever come
to dying. My hair literally turned grey overnight because of the
stress on my body. It was excruciatingly horrible, and I'd take pills
any time rather than face the disease again.

Turby the Turbosurfer

Turby wrote:
It's been a few years, but just before I got to Nias (island off
the coast of Sumatra,) a surfer caught malaria at Lagundi Bay and
died before he could get treatment.

I've had malaria twice (in the Sudan.) It's the closest I've ever
come to dying. My hair literally turned grey overnight because of
the stress on my body. It was excruciatingly horrible, and I'd
take pills any time rather than face the disease again.

Very interesting. The reports I've heard is that malaria, while
nothing to scoff at, is not a serious disease with proper and
timely attention. Just keep an eye out for symptoms and go get it
treated.

How long did the surfer at Lagundi Bay go without treatment? How
quickly did your symptoms get "horrible"?

Gary

"Turby" schreef in bericht
...
On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 10:24:43 +0000 (UTC), "Davros"
wrote:

In all the years I have been travelling to SEA, I have never taken
anti-malarial drugs, nor will I ever take them. I have never known anyone
to
catch it either. Yea it is expensive in London, but why waste your money
on
something that makes you feel crappy.

It's been a few years, but just before I got to Nias (island off the
coast of Sumatra,) a surfer caught malaria at Lagundi Bay and died
before he could get treatment.

I've had malaria twice (in the Sudan.) It's the closest I've ever come
to dying. My hair literally turned grey overnight because of the
stress on my body. It was excruciatingly horrible, and I'd take pills
any time rather than face the disease again.

Both cases are very a-typical
are you sure that it was malaria ?

Up to my sources it takes 3 to 4 days before you get in the situation as you
describe.
Why didn't you take your mefloquinum -boost after the first symtoms ?

On 19 Dec 2003 21:18:32 GMT, Gary Fritz wrote:

Turby wrote:
It's been a few years, but just before I got to Nias (island off
the coast of Sumatra,) a surfer caught malaria at Lagundi Bay and
died before he could get treatment.

I've had malaria twice (in the Sudan.) It's the closest I've ever
come to dying. My hair literally turned grey overnight because of
the stress on my body. It was excruciatingly horrible, and I'd
take pills any time rather than face the disease again.

Very interesting. The reports I've heard is that malaria, while
nothing to scoff at, is not a serious disease with proper and
timely attention. Just keep an eye out for symptoms and go get it
treated.

Malaria is still one of the biggest killers in Africa, because
treatment is so rare. It's not a great threat to tourists because they
usually carry drugs, and are usually close to treatment. Locals, OTOH,
may never see a clinic, a doctor, or any medicine in their lifetime.

How long did the surfer at Lagundi Bay go without treatment?

Dunno, but ISTR he didn't think it that serious at first. At the time,
there was no clinic on Nias.

How quickly did your symptoms get "horrible"?

See my next post.

Turby the Turbosurfer

On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:03:26 GMT, "Dieter Aa" Dieter
wrote:
"Turby" schreef in bericht

I've had malaria twice (in the Sudan.) It's the closest I've ever come
to dying. My hair literally turned grey overnight because of the
stress on my body. It was excruciatingly horrible, and I'd take pills
any time rather than face the disease again.

Both cases are very a-typical

Not really.

are you sure that it was malaria ?

Absolutely.

Up to my sources it takes 3 to 4 days before you get in the situation as you
describe.
Why didn't you take your mefloquinum -boost after the first symtoms ?

This was in 1979. IIRC, I was taking Chloroquine. I was taking it
daily, and switched to a weekly dose, or vice versa. I may have got
infected during the switchover, but the pills were not 100% effective
in any case. The bug might have just got past the drug. There was no
such thing as a mefloquinum -boost, at the time, I don't think.

I flew from Nairobi to Juba, in the Southern Sudan on Sudan Airways.
(Before we landed, one of the engines quit. Talk about a scary
flight...) In Juba, I got on a stern-paddle wheel boat going down the
Nile. One 3-level boat with a barge on either side and pushing 3
barges in front. An incredible trip. 3000 people on a boat made for
1000, lazily sliding down the river for a week through the Sudd, which
is a vast papyrus swamp. Somewhere on that trip, I got bit. The first
symptoms didn't show up until the last day, when we docked in Kosti, a
few hours south of Khartoum by truck. By the time I got to Khartoum, I
was in bad shape. The truck dropped me at a hotel, and I checked in. I
knew I was in trouble, and tried to go outside. I couldn't walk and
wound up crawling into the street. Someone picked me up, put me in the
back of a pickup, and drove me to a hospital. The doctors were on
lunch break, so I lay on a concrete bench for two hours. When they
came back, they took me into an office. While there, I vomited on the
doctor's shoes, and he slugged me with his fist. I spent the night
there with a glucose (dextrose?) IV, and mega doses of quinine. The
next day, I felt much better and left the hospital.

Malaria eggs take ~2 weeks to incubate and hatch. Quinine is only
effective on live bugs, not the eggs.

In the next two weeks, I went north to Atbara, on the Nile, then out
to Suakin, on the Red Sea. (Suakin is, like Lamu in Kenya, built out
of sea coral. The architecture is fascinating. Building blocks,
cement, aggregate, and plaster are all made from coral.) On the way
back, I stopped in a village in the middle of the desert - i think it
was Musmar. There was a festival going on. I took some nice pictures
of camel races and some Fuzzy Wuzzy (sp?) tribesmen. The next day, on
the road back to Atbara, the symptoms started showing again. I got a
fever, diarhea, headaches, muscle cramps and nausea about the time I
noticed the driver was headed off in the wrong direction. We didn't
speak a common language, so I couldn't figure out what was going on.
An hour later, we stopped in the middle of nowhere and he proudly
showed me the ruins of a WWII tank battle. When we got back to Atbara,
he dropped me at the hospital, where I spent another night on an IV in
a dirty, blood-soaked bed.

In both cases, the symptoms hit like a sledgehammer, with little
buildup, when I was far away from any help.

Turby the Turbosurfer

That all was 1979 in Africa, a high risk place for Malaria. My brother,
who is a missionary in the Central African republic (Bangui), also
immediately caught malaria when he moved there about 12 years ago (but
he was treated very well and now is still working there).

Still, we are talking about SE Asia, a very different place. While
Malaysia is not 100% free of malaria, it is very low risk, so that I
never take any antimalaria pills. The same holds for Thailand, where the
only risk areas are the mountains to the north and Koh Chang island (and
perhaps some other place to the south).
When we went to Angkor in September 2000, during the rain season, I
think we didn't take any pills either, but in any case weren't stung by
mosquitoes.

Concerning Nias island, it is classified as a "malaria hell", so it's no
real wonder the surfer got malaria there. But we aren't talking about
Indonesia in this post.
--

Alfred Molon

http://www.molon.de/Galleries.htm - Photos from Myanmar, Brunei,
Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, Egypt, Austria, Budapest and
Portugal

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 09:30:59 GMT, Alfred Molon
wrote:

[snip]
Still, we are talking about SE Asia, a very different place. While
Malaysia is not 100% free of malaria, it is very low risk, so that I
never take any antimalaria pills.
[snip]

The Ministry of Health there told us that malaria is only in the deep
jungles nowadays.

Malaysia is a pretty highly developed country.

Michael

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