[Jemian]

One of the case studies that he told us about was a man from a small hospital in eastern NC who had not been properly diagnosed before he was "shipped out" to their hospital where he later died.

This is the very reason why we stock up on preventative and treatments prior to returning to the States. It is scary to think you have malaria in the states as the medicos have no clue how to treat it. I'll trust them, barely, for a diagnosis, but then, I'll treat myself.

[srmorton]

I don't know for sure, but I think what might have happened is that the first hospital laboratory never looked at a blood smear on the patient. My beginning hematology students could recognize malaria on a pulled blood smear. While in the “olden days”, we did these on almost every patient that came into the hospital, but now there are instruments that can do the test that we used to have to do manually with a blood smear. This man was very sick, but he most likely would be alive today had it not taken two weeks for him to be properly diagnosed.