how neccessary are malaria tablets?

Originally Posted by machadinha

Please, don't tell me this is the first time you thought of it... (And btw, I thought you had long landed in India by now? May be confused with another poster though.)

Malaria prophylaxes don't offer 100% protection from the disease no, and they won't protect you at all from getting bitten, so you should still try to prevent this no matter whether you take anti-malarials or not. What they do is offer a degree of protection, then should you contract the disease after all, the symptoms and general development will be less drastic, buying you time to seek proper treatment, as you certainly should. They may or may not make such subsequent treatment easier, I'm not sure of this. (I think the treatment essentially consists of higher doses of the same, or rather different kinds of, anti-malarials, again, I'm not sure.)

The malaria-carrying mosquitoes (of the Anopheles genus) are said to be active from dusk till dawn, notably around dusk I believe (people report on this differently, also depending on how attractive they are to mosquitoes to begin with one presumes. Some get eaten alive, others are barely bothered by them.) (... Reading up a little on this, it seems some of the species concerned are said to be most active around dusk and dawn as such, whereas others are said to be nocturnal = active all night.)

However, dengue for instance (a serious disease with so far no real prevention or treatment I believe) is carried by different species of mosquitoes that are active by day. So one can't rely on protection at night only.

Most of this stuff should be summarized in any decent travel guidebook's health section, or so one should hope. Information should also be widely available on the web, or on this site even, with plenty of spurious stuff to go with it.

Oh ps just a note that this thread until post #52 dated to spring 2005.

Originally Posted by grikoo

Sharrystar- 2.25 is fairly cheap. Not sure you'll find anything cheaper. The cheapest I've seen with canadian pharmacies was about 2.00

Originally Posted by machadinha

You'll realize a British pound is two Canadian dollars right?

If you hadn't noticed yet, I'm not about to take these unfounded US-centric assertions at face value anymore. It's nothing personal; it just is.

ps RHill, go have a swell trip then, once again

Originally Posted by machadinha

You'll realize a British pound is two Canadian dollars right?

If you hadn't noticed yet, I'm not about to take these unfounded America-centric assertions at face value anymore. It's nothing personal; it just is.

ps RHill, go have a swell trip then, once again

Originally Posted by grikoo

Two per day of what?

I can't think of anything that you'd need to take two of, unless you're taking two at the same time. (for example if you have 50mg doxy tabs instead of 100mg)

And most prophylactic drugs are recommended for at least a week after you return.