Laos forum

Doxycycline often makes people sensitive to sun light and your burn a lot easier, which is it's biggest side effect, so if you normally burn easily then use extra protection and a higher factor. Then you have the usual headaches, nausea etc that you get with almost all medications. However a plus side of it is that it's actually an antibiotic (cure for chlamydia!) and so it often prevents stomach upsets that you might catch on holiday.

The most effective anti-malarial is Malarone but it's a lot more expensive, and I think only about 3% more effective. With Doxy you have to take it for 28 days after visiting a malarial zone and so you will still have a degree of protection elsewhere. Also if you're female it does stop the pill from being effective so make sure you're protected in other ways.

As no antimalarial is 100% effective the best treatment is prevention, so try to keep covered, use high % deet spray and use a mosquito net if available. Also bare in mind that malaria can take months to show any symptoms so if you're still travelling or return home with flu like symptoms make sure to get it checked out and mention your recent travels to your doctor.

Hope this helps! (I'm a nurse who's worked on an infectious diseases ward).

"Actually Doxy is the mildest of the Malaria drugs" - Malarone is the winner surely. If you plan to be in KL at all, I bought Malarone there and it was considerably cheaper than in the UK.

Malaria prophylactics are not needed in Lao unless you are going on an extended jungle trek. Get advice from a specialist in tropical medicine, preferably one who works in the region.

Hello
just wanted to share that i had to get ALOT of doxycycline malaria tablets 7 months worth (520 to be exact) for me and my boyfriend.
Now i had to shop around and asked boots, local pharmacist etc all coming back at about £105 EEKKKKK

Then i called my Local Tesco who where very helpful and said instead of paying per pill (like all the others had done) he would order them in as 50 packs to make it cheaper.....so that total has gone from £105 to £40 all in!!!!!

Also he said he would provide two bottles so we could pop our million pills in and take the label off of one of the blister backs (so customs wont get funny) this will save us a HUGE amount of room in our backpacks.

Anyway just thought i would share this info, If you are looking for cheap Doxycycline tablets and don’t want to go to an online chemist (which could be dodge)

Cheers

Seriously. 7 months on Doxy? Overkill time 20.But to each his own.