“Locked in my room”

septiembre 14th, 2009

I thought I’d update my blog since I’ve got a bit of time on my hands. I’ve got time on my hands because my girlfriend has locked me in my room. If you can hear a banging that’s her nailing lumps of wood across the door to stop me trying to go to work. Reason for this? Because I managed to get Malaria this week. It started on Monday, when I got a slight fever, so I took some paracetamol, and thought little about it. On Tuesday I was feeling pretty tired, and again at night got a fever, slightly higher, running nose, cough, so I thought ok, I’ve obviously got man flu – on Wednesday I’ll do the morning team meeting then maybe try and rest for an hour. On returning to bed, however, it really stepped into gear.

First came the feeling of icy cold, but right down deep inside, so that no matter how many clothes and blankets you put on, you feel like you’ll never get warm again. The aching and discomfort starts to slowly curl you up into the foetal position. And then comes the rigors. “Rigoring” is a medical term meaning uncontrolled shivering as the body attempts to raise its temperature to fight an infection. All I can say is they undersold it at nursing college. You start shaking so hard you think your bones are going to tear out of your joints. It feels like you’re going to shake your way right out of the bed, but as soon as you displace the covers the air coming in through the gap feels like a jet of ice cold water. Finally, my hands went completely numb, and my body reached its new temperature of 40 degrees. Much as being English, I don’t like ‘make a fuss’, I realised this might be slightly more than man flu, so I called my girlfriend “Hello dear, really sorry to bother you but…”

Well, last year here in DRC we had around 11% of the worlds cases of malaria, but only 7% of people got access to effective medications and 12% of the population were protected by bed nets. So apparently no, we don’t seem very interested in fixing the problem.

She arrived straight away with one of the cars, I was whisked down to the lab and had been tested, found positive and started on the correct treatment within a couple of hours. But then its pretty easy to get that kind of service when you live next door to a doctor who’s a specialist in tropical medicine and sleep next to your own personal nurse. It’s also easy to treat malaria because, well, its easy to treat. We’ve known how its transmitted, how to prevent it, and how to treat it for over a hundred years now. The medications are cheap and instantly effective, and a bed net will protect your whole family for a couple of dollars.

And yet, according to the World Health Organisation, there was an estimated 250 million cases worldwide last year of which 1 million died, the vast majority children under five and pregnant women. Hard to imagine, so try this instead: imagine seven jumbo jets full of small children and their pregnant mothers taking off. Shortly after take off, they simultaneously slam into a mountain and explode in a big fireball. Now imagine that happening every single day of the year. We’d probably fix the problem pretty quick. Well, last year here in DRC we had around 11% of the worlds cases, but only 7% of people got access to effective medications and 12% of the population were protected by bed nets. So apparently no, we don’t seem very interested in fixing the problem.

Its been a couple of days now and I’m on the mend. The sickness and the abdominal pain has stopped, although I still wake drenched in sweat every few hours, so much so that I’ve sweat my way through all my clothes and have started wearing my girlfriends. I look like a drag queen withdrawing from heroin, but I’m told by Monday I should be back at work. Which brings me to the other effect of malaria, lost productivity. While I was sick, we had to cancel two clinics. So I can’t help but wonder, if while I was recovering from my bout of malaria, anyone died of theirs.

Colin Beckworth is usually to be found running mobile clinics in the Masisi area of North Kivu, but is currently under house arrest courtesy of other members of the Medical Team. Any letters of support or cakes containing files should be sent to MSF United Kingdom. Or Amnesty International. Thanks;)

Tags: Children, Masisi, Medical