MORE ON MALARIA
In a pre-Movable Type post, from September 2002, I quoted Chris Matthews, writing on his bout with malaria:
I had the species of malaria, falciparum, which is the most aggressive. It kills you either by clogging up the arteries to your brain or by simply killing enough blood cells to cause extreme anemia.
Parasites had taken over 4 percent to 5 percent of my blood cells. A pathologist at Sibley told my wife Kathleen that he'd never seen so many parasites on one slide.
With all those rioting bugs racing through my brain, no wonder I was delirious. The bottom line is that I'm a very lucky fellow. I had great doctors. I was given quinine, antibiotics and that wonderful intravenous that kept running fluid into me. I was in an air-conditioned hospital so nice they call it "Club Sib."
I kept thinking, especially in those early days in intensive care, what it's like getting malaria for the average African. You're lying in some hut. It's 105 degrees. You're running a temperature almost that high. You have no quinine, no drugs whatsoever and no clean water. You just lie there sweating and delirious until the lights go out.
Millions of people die this way every single year because Americans disapprove of DDT.