Host Countries and Malaria

[west_nile_virus]

You know, all this talk about malaria drugs makes me curious. What do the HCNs in your countries typically do to prevent malaria? Do they take prophylaxis or just make do with mosquito nets? It seems unlikely to me that people around the world take a lot of these drugs, what with the steep prices and side effects. What about counterfeit malaria

Comments

[nirethak]

In my community in Honduras, it was mostly addressed as a public health issue -- when the rainy season started, the health committee would go around town looking for standing water and asking people to clean it up to reduce mosquito breeding grounds (pick up trash, clean their cisterns, drain puddles, etc). Sometimes (but not with any kind of consistency) the government would give out these thingies that were like baggies full of slow-release insecticide that people could put in their cisterns to kill mosquito larva, or sometimes people would just use bleach.
It was mostly effective except that the water system crapped out regularly so people had to go down to the creek where they were exposed to mosquitoes (that's how I personally got dengue fever :P) -- one of my projects was to improve the water system.

[christine]

This is pretty much the case in Costa Rica as well...

[lady_lunacy]

They typically build up a resistance or have a genetic resistance to malaria

Wiki has a nice writeup about genetic resistance here The bit about the Tharu people is really interesting.