Chronic or Half Treated Malaria
Dear Dr,
I’m having severe cold with pain all over my body; particularly the waist, hip bone, knees, sternum, including my ribs. At times, it’s in my lungs. In addition, I have a sour taste in my mouth with headache from the back and eye aches, I sweat a lot especially when I sleep, waking up with the whole bed drenched, as well as my pajamas. My appetite could be better. I am 63 years of age. I’ve just recently treated malaria with the recommended Lumefantrine Artemeter combination. I do not have an idea why I am so unwell. I am miserable and don’t know what to do. Please help me
Shamsideen Saleh, Sokoto
Dear Shamsideen,
The commonest cause of your symptoms in this clime is half –treated malaria. I use Piperaquine or Amodiaquine and Artemisinine to treat malaria instead of the combination you mentioned which I have discovered is associated with plenty of cases like yours where malaria gets only half-treated and thus returns within a fortnight or so. I think you have Chronic Malaria with some amount of Enteric Fever (salmonellosis) into the bargain. You could also have some amount of Elderly Pneumonia. Malaria’s symptoms can become very much milder than the usual high fever especially with patients in highly endemic areas like here in Nigeria especially with the older generation who have had a long time since birth to develop their immunity. The body pains, especially pains in the joints also can make the care-giver think of arthritis. A safe rule is to treat every arthritis sufferer first for malaria and to check them all over to rule out elderly pneumonia whose presentation, also, can be much milder than classical. You should see a good doctor who would order tests like the Widal test for you to confirm or deny the suspicion of salmonellosis or typhoid and get treated with the relevant antibiotics. There are also wonderful natural cures and remedies for both typhoid and malaria (together) which you can use and both your malaria and typhoid will disappear. Just call the help-lines
