QUESTION For about two years in the early '90s I indulged in self-prescription of chloroquine because then, I lived in a mosquito infested environment which made me suffer constant malarial attacks. Could this be why I now suffer from severe pains around my pelvis and down my thighs to one of my knées? I make this guess as a layman because recently, following a malarial attack, I took a … [Read more...]
Can of Worms: Travel Parasites to Know About
Malaria isn’t the only parasite you need to think about when you travel In my last post, I shared some of the misguided myths about malaria that I had heard while hanging out with the tourists on Zanzibar. Then, in the in-flight magazine on the internal flight between Dar and Mwanza (my flight was over an hour late…hence how the airline, Precision Air, earned its local nickname: “Imprecision … [Read more...]
The Effects of Maternal Helminth and Malaria Infections on Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission
Objective: To investigate the effect of helminth and/or malaria infection on the risk of HIV infection in pregnant women and its transmission to their offspring. Design: A retrospective cohort study of pregnant Kenyan women and their offspring from term, uncomplicated vaginal deliveries (n = 936) with a nested case-control study. Methods: We determined the presence of HIV, malaria, … [Read more...]