Blog 2 Larium Dreams and malaria prevention

At last a good nights sleep. On Saturday we started taking Larium for protection against malaria and we were both regularly woken by strange and vivid dreams. The known side effects of Larium include psychotic episodes so wild dreams seem quite mild Still, we are only taking it once a week, so maybe we will just have silly Saturdays for the next few weeks.
Of course there is no guarantee that these dreams were caused by the Larium. Once, when camping in the Amazon basin I dreamt I was grabbing a rugby ball and woke shaking my tent mate’s head. He woke with even more of a start than I did. We weren't taking Larium then, just Doxicyclene, a malarial prophylactic that leaves one very prone to sunburn.
We spent some time deciding what if anything we should take to prevent malaria as it involves interesting compromises. Malaria kills more than one million people a year, so its no trivial disease. There is no effective medical treatment once its caught, making prevention important. Avoiding being bitten by mosquitoes would do the trick, so bug repellent and mossie nets are a really good start. As mosquitoes carry several other nasty diseases such as dengue fever, for which there is no prophylactic, nets and bug spray are even more sensible. Insecticide impregnated mosquito nets are the main protection for many as malaria is increasingly drug resistant and the new drugs are very expensive.
DDT was used very effectively to eradicate malaria from many areas. The Terai in Nepal was made habitable with DDT and is now a very productive rice growing region. Rachel Carson and “Silent Spring” ended the use of DDT and nothing has been found to replace it. In Nepal we were surprised at how despised her name was.
It’s hard to assess whether the side effects of the current drugs are a bigger risk than the disease. Most fit people recover in a few weeks and it doesn’t always recur. However opinion in our suburb seams strongly in favour of the drugs after one of our local GPs returned from foreign parts and was laid low with it.
There is some good research happening on malaria prevention and some promising new drugs, in the interim we’ll risk silly Sundays. If this seems a bit deep for a travel blog – blame it on the Larium.

We are now in Chang Mai at the delightful Banthai Villlage boutique hotel as guests of one of the agencies. Today we head off to zip line through the tree tops before a 60km cycle back to town.

Chang Mai, 7 am.
Ross