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I got malaria twice in Africa. First time bad, second time REAL bad. I thought about death a little. There was a good story of a Dutchman living in Mali who go
by testing22321 20d ago
I got malaria twice in Africa. First time bad, second time REAL bad. I thought about death a little.
There was a good story of a Dutchman living in Mali who got malaria a few times (everyone does). It’s manageable with the meds.
Anyway he flies home, then develops symptoms. Goes to hospital and they freak. Full hazmat suits, isolation, doctors visiting from all over because they’d never seen it. Guy ends up dying because they wouldn’t give him the meds, because they didn’t know if it was safe, or what the right thing to do was.
Moral of the story is that for anyone spending time in malaria zones, take the meds home with you. If you get symptomatic, take the meds and maybe not go to hospital in the developed world.
Meds I took was “coartem” and an injectable.
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- 0bytes 20d agoIf you go to a Malaria zone, talk to your doctor to get Malarone and use it prophylactic (depending on the region)
- testing22321 20d agoI was there for years, you can’t take malarias that long.
- hilariously 20d agoAnd some of them have Super powerful side effects - I had a 3 day violent psychotic break I have no memory of, but I did get to wake up strapped to a bed!
- foobiekr 20d agoMalarone gave me insane almost-kindof-sortof waking dreams of concerning character. I have never had anything like that before or since.
- codethief 20d agoMalarone? Interesting, because that's supposed to be the prophylactic therapy with the mildest side effects. I have taken it many times and have never had any, and – up until now – I had also never heard of anyone having some.
- hilariously 20d agoMy snap was also on Malarone.
- testing22321 20d agoThe US military used to prescribe larium to members for malaria prevention . That’s the one that is infamous for nasty dreams. 10% of all people who were on it now have permanent psychosis. Oh yeah.
- CoastalCoder 20d agoWow! I wonder what the physiology of that was.
- pton_xd 20d agoDoxycycline can also be used. I took doxycycline monohydrate daily for a month and had no observable impact on my digestion, which surprised me.
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- 0x262d 20d agoHow could two people die from it in Germany with modern medicine? Is malaria randomly fatal despite treatment, or did they not understand what the infection was or not seek treatment or something?
- testing22321 20d agoCerebral malaria is fatal with no treatment in many cases. For kids and elderly it’s fatal even with. Likely this happened because they have no expertise and didn’t know what to do. Imagine if you showed up in a hospital in the us with a sting from some super intense scorpion that only exists is some obscure part of the world. They’ll try to help, but likely can’t do much.
- vezycash 20d agoNigerian here, cerebral malaria is very curable. It's very common and people survive.
- testing22321 20d agoSorry I wasn’t more clear. I meant with no treatment it is often fatal. Almost certainly do for kids and elderly with no treatment.
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- spankibalt 20d agoFrom the article: "It [the Robert Koch Institute] said laboratory tests to determine the source of the infections were not expected to be available for several weeks. [...] The [Robert Koch] institute said malaria in Germany almost exclusively affects long-haul travellers who were infected in malaria-endemic areas, and that malaria transmitted within a German airport is rare. 'The lack of a travel history can lead to a delayed diagnosis. A delayed diagnosis increases the risk of a severe course of the diseases,' the institute said in its epidemiological bulletin."
- morkalork 20d agoThe author of the book Mother Nature is Trying to Kill You had a story like that; he managed to pick up a parasitic fly infection while abroad and had to convince health care workers to cut out the larvae from under his skin.
- coryrc 20d agoBotfly. Don't cut, they dig deeper. The proper solution is a thick layer of petroleum jelly over your skin. The larva has to come up to breathe eventually (~hours). Use tweezers and grab it. Gross, but perfectly safe.
- codethief 20d agoThere are great YouTube videos documenting this process btw. :-)
- bauruine 20d agoDoesn't the Netherlands have some sort of institute of tropical medicine which deals with exactly those cases?
- Tangurena2 20d agoIf the airport workers had travelled to another country, their doctors would have looked for tropical/travel diseases. Usually, it is through shipping containers where unwanted insects cross borders. That's how murder hornets and flying cockroaches got into the US.
- bauruine 20d agoI'm asking about the Dutchman story the parent wrote. I can hardly believe it tbh. Even if the Netherlands don't have specialized personel, Hamburg is just a 5 hour drive away and Antwerp even closer.
- brokencipher 20d agoMaybe you're thinking about the The Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp/Belgium?
- bauruine 20d agoI was thinking about the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and assumed most western countries have something like that. The German Wikipedia article about "Tropeninstitut" mentions the KIT for the Netherlands [0] altough that article sounds way less about medicine than the Swiss one or the German Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine or the Belgian one you mentioned. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tropical_Institute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Tropical_Institute
- fma 20d agoKind of similar to rabies. If you get bit by a rabid animal in an area with lots of rabies, the doctors know what to do and you get meds immediately for cheap. In the US it's a few thousand dollars for the treatment.
- mimischi 20d agoI thought anything in the US is ridiculous amounts of money, when it’s related to health/hospital.
- ipsod 20d agoIt's really not, for common/minor issues. I use a little cash-pay clinic in a MCOL area and mostly spend <$100, never over $200, per visit. Also, my wife recently had some major dental work done, and it was about $350. All of this without getting insurance involved. There are definitely ways to rack up big bills fast, though, just by being unlucky.
- datsci_est_2015 20d ago> cash-pay clinic I’ve never heard of this. Private practice? If so, count your blessings until they get hoovered up by PE and quadruple their prices overnight.
- ipsod 20d agoYeah, private practice.
- kotaKat 20d agoIt's not quite PE (yet); doctors are getting annoyed themselves at how healthcare is playing out. Picture things like electronically messaging your doctor now has convoluted billing behind each conversation now based on the level of effort the doctor has to put in. They're getting annoyed now that they've been bought out by hospital systems and been working underneath them for a while doing family practices and other healthcare services. The paychecks were good, but the red tape got annoying over the years. So they exit the whole system and go to a direct "you pay me monthly for access" model. Hundred bucks a person or so per month, factor a ~25% discount for families. Doc gets to keep a cap on the limit of incoming patients to manage their own day pretty nicely while getting a recurring stream of cash paid direct to him. Even better if your wife's also a doctor (hey, healthcare partners run together a lot!), you just band together, see 5-600 patients a month as a couple, and pull in a decent $million or so on a fairly light workload and selling extra things like GLP-1s and wellness programs for a year's work. Triple-points if you're doing this in rural America - that million might not be a lot to the big techies out there, but that's big bucks that go far in some really nice places tucked away in the trees and forests. You still need insurance for the rest of the 'stuff' they don't do, but some of these DPCs are doing everything they can in house (like prescribing and dispensing generics at the office directly in a single visit to lower your extra out of pocket costs). If you're on a high deductible healthcare plan with an HSA and an employer contributing healthily into it, these direct-patient-care clinics may be an attractive option if you're reasonably healthy and young.
- roncesvalles 20d agoI have a feeling this is exactly what happened in Frankfurt. It very glaringly points to some failure in the healthcare system. Healthy working adults with access to healthcare don't just die of malaria. Two deaths means it's not some unique susceptibility in one individual either. The more interesting investigation would be how the system let two people die of malaria, not how malaria got there.
- codethief 20d ago> It very glaringly points to some failure in the healthcare system. Does it? "Have you been near the equator recently?" is a rather common question that GPs ask when you go see them with high fever. Doctors in Germany are absolutely aware of malaria, given how much we like to travel to all those beautiful, but unfortunately malaria-ridden countries. The only thing, of course, is: That question wouldn't have helped here. However, this[0] source says airport staff are made aware of the possibility of contracting malaria and are told to watch out for symptoms. [0]: https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/hessen/malaria-am-frankfurter-flughafen-100.html https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/hessen/malaria-am-...
- kevin_thibedeau 20d agoThe irony is that Germany used to be a malaria ridden country.
- RamblingCTO 19d agoI don't think so. The Frankfurt University Hospital is used to weird shit like Ebola. There is a fuck up somewhere in here, but I don't think it's this detail. Frankfurt had airport malaria before as well.
- palijer 20d agoThis is one of the reasons why diverse medical teams and having nurses/doctors/pharmacists etc from other countries is a great idea.
- jeffrallen 20d agoI saw the same thing happen in Leeds. A friend came back to her public health program after Christmas in Zimbabwe. The NHS was dragging their feet, like, "oh, we need to get a specialists opinion before we can even draw blood, then it has to be sent to the school of tropical medicine, that will be a few days, etc". Her African friends (and a European friend that worked in Africa for MSF) had to explain malaria to the hospital and beg them to just get her started on an artemsin compound while they were wasting time wondering how to test for it.
- Scoundreller 20d agoSimilar story from an academic that developed symptoms upon return to the US. First hospital brushed him off. Second one, got the right infectious disease doctor/professor to diagnose and treat it. Professor had as many med students/residents as he could come by to see what someone with malaria looks like. "See this man? He has malaria, don't miss it" was burned into his mind by the end.