We did.
Posted on 10/04/2014 6:32:53 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Officials and medical personnel have expressed concern that American troops being deployed in Liberia to fight the spread of the Ebola virus may be at risk for contracting malaria, an often just-as-deadly disease more easily spread in an insecure sanitary atmosphere.
A local report from Denver's KUSA notes that, in the wake of Fort Carson, Colorado sending 160 troops to Liberia in the coming weeks, military medical personnel are beginning to engage with the possibility of troops contracting malaria. According to medical expert Dr. John Torres, one child dies every day in Africa from malaria, an astronomical figure. While Ebola can only be transmitted through contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, individuals can contract malaria through mosquito bites, which puts many more people at risk and makes the potential for infection much higher.
Medical experts in Africa warn that there will likely be a simultaneous increase in deaths by unrelated infectious diseases in Ebola-affected regions, as medical resources go to containing the virus rather than combating other diseases. Reuters reports that malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia are expected to kill many more people until the Ebola outbreak subsides -- and malaria already kills an average of 100,000 people per year in west Africa...
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
~ Ogden Nash
The joys of the tropics.
....”military heading into the hot zone will get shots upon shots to protect them from everything they have a shot for.”....
Well yes, that was also my first thought after reading this article. Which includes for Malaria.
Guess I’ll have to read rest of the thread to see further what the concern might be...as I believe, still, this Ebola beast is far more dangerous to our troops.
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Quinine is bitter! And, the few times I've had to take it, I've lost all sense of proportion in my vision and I've heard orchestras playing. Which is odd, because I live right next to the jungle.
“I thought we figured out malaria back in Panama Canal days.”
Nope.
We had more malaria/Denge/Dysentery casualties than wounded during the Vietnam war.
“Vietnam War (1962–1975): Malaria felled more combatants during the war than bullets. The disease reduced the combat strength of some units by half. Over 40,000 cases of Malaria were reported in US Army troops alone between 1965 and 70 with 78 deaths. The U.S. Army established a malaria drug research program when U.S. troops first encountered drug resistant malaria during the war. In 1967, the Chinese scientists set up Project 523 - a secret military project - to help the Vietnamese military defeat malaria by developing artemisinin based anti malarial formulations.
Operation Restore Hope (1992–1994): Malaria was the No. 1 cause of casualties among US troops during the operation. From the time of deployment through April 1993, malaria was diagnosed in 48 military personnel. Malaria was diagnosed in 83 military personnel (21 Marine and 62 Army) following their return from Somalia.
Malaria in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Liberia (2001–2003): Many US soldiers in Iraq walked while eating just to avoid being bitten and infected by mosquitoes. In October 2001, a falciparum malaria epidemic that erupted in Afghanistan claimed 53 lives. When 290 marines went ashore in Liberia in September 2003, 80 contracted malaria. Of the 157 troops who spent at least one night ashore, 69 became infected. In Liberia, over a third of U.S. Marines sent in as military advisors to oversee a civil transition have contracted malaria.”
http://www.malariasite.com/malaria/history_wars.htm
Whites daily daily.
The only easy explanation that comes to me immediately is that it’s 365 children per year and the rest are adults. The calculator says that’s 272 adults per child.
That sounds too high to me. I’d bet he’s off by some order of magnitude, maybe a child per hour instead of per day, for example.
DDT could help minimize the malaria threat problem.
We did.
Time to start mixing up gin and tonics for the troops then.
CC
According to WHO, it’s 3000 children per day.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2003/pr33/en/
But then that’s 1.1M/year, which means the article is still really screwy.
Thank you, Rachel Carson.
You're one of the great mass murderers of history.
Americans have so much to get used to, just being there. Meanwhile, the disease control people are thumping their chests about how Nigeria was successful in containing. The US should generously offer to match the money that the Chinese and Russians pay the Africans to set up the necessary quarantine facilities.
I’ve spent many years in the tropics. Somehow, I managed not to catch it. I religiously took all the pills I was supposed to while on active duty as well as in my civilian career. I guess I can thank all those vodka and tonics I ingested over the decades helped defeat malaria but it didn’t do my liver much good.
Yes Yankee fan, Quinine is indeed bitter. But it was in the form of pills if I remember right. And mother bribed us kids with a spoon of honey as a reward haha.
There are also some vegetables we ate which were quite bitter and as a kid I hated them. I am thinking they contained natural form of quinine.
I think Tonic water contains some quinine, does it not?
Gin & tonic is the only drink I order now a days. My martini days are long over.
I was looking at my old Army shot records and it says WHO (World Health Organization), do they still say that?
*the new 'normal' since the Coup of '08
That ‘one child a day’ reference was erroneously low. Malaria is still a big problem.
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