Infectious diseases not necessarily common in Canada can occur and may even be widespread in other countries. Standards of hygiene and medical care may differ from those at home. Before departure, you should learn about the health conditions in the country or countries you plan to visit, your own risk of disease and the steps you can take to prevent illness.

Causes

A one-celled parasite, plasmodium, causes malaria. About 170 species of plasmodium exist, but only four cause malaria in humans:
• P. falciparum. This species, predominant in Africa, produces the most severe symptoms and is responsible for most malaria deaths.
• P. vivax. This species, found mostly in tropical areas of Asia, produces less severe symptoms but can remain in your liver and cause relapses for up to three years

Malaria Symptoms

If anyone in your family develops fever, shaking chills, muscle and body aches during or even months after your trip, contact a physician as soon as possible as these may be malaria symptoms or signs of another travel-related ailment. Remember, while it is certainly best to prevent malaria, it is fortunately a treatable illness in persons of all ages..

Prevention

There's no effective vaccine against malaria. In countries where the disease is endemic, prevention involves keeping mosquitoes away from humans. This has included the use of insecticide-treated mosquito netting and spraying indoor walls with insecticide.

Most drugs used to treat malaria are also used to prevent it. Doctors sometimes use the antibiotic doxycycline to prevent malaria. Two or three months before traveling to an area where malaria is prevalent, talk to your doctor or a tropical disease specialist or visit a travel health clinic to obtain the necessary medications to prevent malaria and to receive travel-related vaccines and information. Explain to your doctor exactly where you're going. The drugs you're prescribed depend on the level of drug resistance within your area of travel.

Complications

Most complications of malaria are associated with infection by P. falciparum. Among the complications is an extensive destruction of red blood cells, which can result in severe anemia. In addition, if parasite-filled blood cells block small blood vessels to your brain (cerebral malaria), swelling of your brain or brain damage may occur. Other complications may include:

• Breathing problems, at times severe in the form of accumulated fluid in your lungs (pulmonary edema)
• Dehydration
• Liver failure
• Kidney failure
• Rupture of the spleen

Medication

No drug therapy is 100% effective, but some of them can go a long way to preventing malaria.

Currently the drug Malarone (a combination of atovaquone and proguanil) is the drug of choice when travelling to areas and regions where chloroquine-resistant malaria exists.

The antibiotic doxycycline can also be used in areas of chloroquine resistance.

Chloroquine is generally very safe and has few side effects, but is not effective anymore in regions where the malarial parasites have become resistant to chloroquine.

Mefloquine prevents the development of malaria parasites in the blood. Mefloquine does not destroy the Plasmodium (P.) vivax or P. ovale parasites that may remain in the liver.

You take mefloquine hydrochloride as a tablet (orally).

To prevent malaria, you take mefloquine once, 1 to 2 weeks before you travel to an area where malaria is present, and then weekly while you are in the area, and weekly for 4 weeks after you leave.