Artemisinin-Based Combination Therapy
With Malaria still wreaking havoc across this part of the world where
I live and practice medicine – and I’m talking a mortality rate of
about 1 million deaths per annum, mainly children – the management and
preventive practices thereof, is certainly of importance to me and my
colleagues where I work.
This male patient had been treated on two seperate occassions but still had fever and the characteristic evening chills of Malaria. He had complied well with the ACT- Artemisinine-based combination therapy – medication given, taking the right dose at the appropriate time, so he had said. So why was he still symptomatic? Could it have been a misdiagnosis, I wondered.
Well, I sent him to the laboratory for a full blood work-up.
This male patient had been treated on two seperate occassions but still had fever and the characteristic evening chills of Malaria. He had complied well with the ACT- Artemisinine-based combination therapy – medication given, taking the right dose at the appropriate time, so he had said. So why was he still symptomatic? Could it have been a misdiagnosis, I wondered.
Well, I sent him to the laboratory for a full blood work-up.
What was your evidence based treatment in the first 2 instances. That would have helped with initial diagnosis.
ReplyDeleteCost is a constraint, yes, but it can't matter when life is at stake.