Malaria outbreak in Goa

federica

Not only if you had it in the 1950... also for people who got vaccinated later. Here they advise for new jabs around every 10 years. The drops are not used here anymore, as they contained living strains of the virus, so there was a very small risk of an infection, especially for unvaccinated people. It means an unvaccinated parent of a fresh vaccinated child had a higher the risk of getting the disease. In the jabs there are no living strains.

Usually I thought I'll never post anything in these malaria/infectious diseases threads, as I am not a medical professional, but when I saw how much unawareness is around I thought it is better to write something or post links to create more interest than staying quite.

Still everyone should search for as much info as possible by themself, from a clinic for tropical diseases and from reliable sources on the internet. Especially as malaria prevention is something so highly personal. Not everyone can take prophylaxis as they all have serious disadvantages, and even when you take pills you can get infected and then the diagnosis is more difficult.

In Germany the Society for Tropical medicine (DTG) doesn't recommend malaria prohylaxis anymore for India except for West Bengal and Assam and now also for Goa. For the rest of the country they advise only stand-by medication for an emergency case. For all German understanding IMers the source: http://www.dtg.org

Aishah

That is interesting news Frederica - have just read this today and it is what I would think myself. However, when the rains come anywhere below 1800metres becomes a malarial risk to anybody. Rajasthan has huge outbreaks of malaria particularly if there has been flooding which happened last year in August. The aftermath is breeding of mosquitoes, not only malarial, but now also chicungunia and dengue.

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