Seems malaria is the trend here in Chimoio these days. First Ricardo, now one of our Zimbabwean employees is sick with fever. Malaria, unfortunately, is really common here and doctors are actually quite good at diagnosing and treating the illness. However, as is too often the case in the developing world, the best malaria medicines are not available in Mozambique.
Before leaving the States, I stocked up on Malarone, a daily prophylactic that can also be taken as a cure. For people using Malarone as a preventive medicine, one pill is taken each day for the duration of the exposure, as well as for a few days before and after the trip. As a cure, a quadruple dose of the pills is taken each day for 3 days. No doubt, Malarone is expensive even for US standards (about US$ 120 for 30 pills without insurance), but it works well and has few side effects.
People have never even heard of Malarone here. The best malaria cure available in Mozambique is a 7-day treatment that assaults the liver and is not guaranteed to provide quick results. Many people have to endure a second week of treatment because the first round is not potent enough against increasingly treatment-resistant strains of malaria. When Ricardo told our friends that he'd taken a 3-day cure and was all better, nobody believed him. Mozambicans have never even heard of a treatment that is effective in such a short time.
Why isn't this treatment available here?? I wonder what kind of interests are being protected by not offering a subsidized or generic version of Malarone - or any other alternative treatment - here in Mozambique, where malaria is the top killer even over HIV/AIDS.
No comments:
Post a Comment