| First symptoms in adults:
- Feel weak, lethargic, uncomfortable, dizzy
- Chills, sweats, fever
- Muscular / abdominal pain
- Vomiting, watery diarrhoea
|
First symptoms in children:
- Cough
- Rapid shallow breathing
- Feverish convulsions
|
Uncomplicated P. falciparum malaria:
- Fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, anaemia
- In non-immune people this rapidly becomes severe, life-threatening
malaria if it remains untreated.
|
| Severe malaria (always P. falciparum)
In children:
- Cerebral: unrousable coma, convulsions, muscle spasm causing backward
arching of body.
- Respiratory distress: deep breathing, flaring nostrils.
- Low blood glucose: restless/aggressive, coma, drowsy, convulsions,
sweating.
In adults:
- Cerebral: unrousable coma, convulsions, muscle spasm causing backward
arching of body, facial grimace.
- Kidney failure: low urine output (less than 400ml per day)
- Fluid on the lungs: laboured or rapid, shallow breathing, frothy sputum,
lack of oxygen in tissues.
|
Other complications:
- Anaemia,
- low blood sugar,
- failure of circulation (shock),
- repeated general convulsions,
- spontaneous bleeding,
- red urine,
- jaundice
- fever with temperature over 40 degrees C.
|
Vivax, ovale & malariae malaria
- Similar to uncomplicated falciparum.
- Vivax: can have long latent periods and relapse after treatment.
- Ovale: more gradual onset than vivax, can relapse, but less common.
Death rare.
- Malariae: more gradual onset, less severe symptoms, can recur after
many years. Death rare.
- Malaria can be confused with flu, blood poisoning, typhoid, dengue,
viral haemorrhagic fevers, meningitis.
|
| Pregnancy: (See Malaria
in Pregnancy Brochure )
Maternal issues:
- increased risk of severe malaria,
- increased risk of death (especially in first pregnancy) sepsis or
bleeding after delivery.
- More common and more often fatal than in non-pregnant women.
Foetal complications:
- abortion,
- still birth,
- foetal anaemia,
- low birth weight,
- retarded growth of the foetus,
- premature delivery,
- baby born with malaria.
|
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