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.

Comments

  1. SMS For HealthMay 9, 2012 at 8:25 PM

    What was your evidence based treatment in the first 2 instances. That would have helped with initial diagnosis.

    Cost is a constraint, yes, but it can't matter when life is at stake.

    ReplyDelete

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