Health and safety forum

I already read about this in the malaria journal over a year ago. Dunno why the media took so long to pick up on it! There have been a couple of good papers this year though.

http://www.malariajournal.com/content/8/1/31

Resistance was very predictable. The Thai Cambodian border area has one of the worst drug resistant malaria problems in the world. They've been using artemisia derivatives as monotherapy for 30 years in Cambodia and then in 2000 they switched to artemisia derivative+mefloquine....

Why that was supposed to help I do not know, because there was already widespread resistance to mefloquine at the time.

There is no such thing as malaria prophylaxis. Malaria prevention drugs just treat you quick as soon as you get the malaria parasites in your blood. For some reason, doxycycline still seems to prevent you getting ill from malaria if you want to take something...as long as you take it exactly as instructed at the same time of day every day and don't miss any doses...(Can you guarantee you can do that? I can't!) ;-) You may develop malaria once you get home if you stop taking doxycycline too soon though.

Doxycycline also causes photo-sensitivity in some people and it can stop contraceptive pills working.

I don't think there's much resistance to Malarone in Cambodia because it isn't sold locally and it's far too expensive for the locals. It's too expensive for backpackers like me as prophylaxis as well... each pill costs about 4 euros.

12 pills is a treatment dose however if you want to carry some with you. But much better to go to a hospital than self treat with Malarone...you need to get a blood test to see what type of malaria it is and rule out Dengue etc. Malarone is for when you can't get to a decent hospital.