30 out of 150 US Marines sent to liberia showing malaria

[MKSheppard]

WASHINGTON — Twelve U.S. Marines who were in Liberia last month in support of a West African peacekeeping mission have contracted malaria and 21 others have symptoms of the disease, defense officials said Monday.

Two of the Marines were flown from the USS Iwo Jima warship off the coast of Liberia (search) to a U.S. medical center in Germany on Saturday and 31 others were flown from the ship Sunday to the Bethesda Naval Medical (search) Center in Maryland, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Marines, members of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., were in Liberia in mid-August as part of a U.S. quick-reaction force of about 150 U.S. troops. They operated from an airport outside Monrovia, the capital.

U.S. troops normally receive an anti-malarial drug regimen before deploying to a country like Liberia where there is risk of getting the disease.

Details on the sick Marines' condition was not immediately available.

Malaria (search) is transmitted by mosquitos that breed in stagnant water and tall grass.

The disease kills 3,000 children a day in Africa and robs the continent of millions of dollars in lost productivity, the United Nations said in a report early this year.

The mosquito-borne disease infects 300 million people a year in the poorest continent and has become increasingly resistant to drugs, said the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF. Yet there are ways to control the disease, they said.

[Xenophobe3691]

Maybe this'll raise interest in drainage programs for not only the poor African nations, but some parts of our own nation.

Then again, maybe the soccer moms'll just bitch till the peacekeepers get moved out...

Fucking soccer moms...

[Joe]

QUAGMIRE! QUAGMIRE!

[Xisiqomelir]

There's chemical prophylaxis available for malaria though. It's a once-a-week pill. And there's mosquito nets and insect repellant etc.

Weren't precautions taken? Or is this a new strain of the disease?

[Tsyroc]

There's chemical prophylaxis available for malaria though. It's a once-a-week pill. And there's mosquito nets and insect repellant etc.

Weren't precautions taken? Or is this a new strain of the disease?

The problem with that stuff is that there's stuff you have to take before you go and then after you get there you have to keep it up, as you mentioned. In both cases they make most people sick or feel like crap.

My hospital had a guy in last month who was in ICU with malaria because the dumb ass stopped taking his doxycycline while he was in Africa.

[Sea Skimmer]

Sounds like a job for aerial DDT spraying, its COMPLETE HARMLESS TO THE HUMAN BODY! The government would rather create lies about its own product of choice then tell you the truth of the avian civil war.

[Xenophobe3691]

Sounds like a job for aerial DDT spraying, its COMPLETE HARMLESS TO THE HUMAN BODY! The government would rather create lies about its own product of choice then tell you the truth of the avian civil war.

Huh? I was never told it was poisonous to humans, they taught us that the reason they stopped spraying DDT was that in concentrated amounts, it caused the shells of bird eggs to thin enough so that they couldn't support even the weight of the chick, and that the animals most affected by this process were the eagles and hawks that were high in the food chain. Please tell me where you learned that it was poisonous to the human body, because no high schooler I know has heard that...

[Sea Skimmer]

Huh? I was never told it was poisonous to humans, they taught us that the reason they stopped spraying DDT was that in concentrated amounts, it caused the shells of bird eggs to thin enough so that they couldn't support even the weight of the chick, and that the animals most affected by this process were the eagles and hawks that were high in the food chain. Please tell me where you learned that it was poisonous to the human body, because no high schooler I know has heard that...

According to the EPA its in the top 10% of most toxic chemical compounds to humans, causing seizures, rashes, confusion, convulsions and parethesia (paralysis) of the tongue and lips, changes in levels of liver enzymes along with some other shit, and is suspected to cause premature labor, birth defects and breast cancer. A lethal dosage is 30 grams.

[Xenophobe3691]

According to the EPA its in the top 10% of most toxic chemical compounds to humans, causing seizures, rashes, confusion, convulsions and parethesia (paralysis) of the tongue and lips, changes in levels of liver enzymes along with some other shit, and is suspected to cause premature labor, birth defects and breast cancer. A lethal dosage is 30 grams.

Holy shit...sounds like Nicotine...

[Joe]

Huh? I was never told it was poisonous to humans, they taught us that the reason they stopped spraying DDT was that in concentrated amounts, it caused the shells of bird eggs to thin enough so that they couldn't support even the weight of the chick, and that the animals most affected by this process were the eagles and hawks that were high in the food chain. Please tell me where you learned that it was poisonous to the human body, because no high schooler I know has heard that...

According to the EPA its in the top 10% of most toxic chemical compounds to humans, causing seizures, rashes, confusion, convulsions and parethesia (paralysis) of the tongue and lips, changes in levels of liver enzymes along with some other shit, and is suspected to cause premature labor, birth defects and breast cancer. A lethal dosage is 30 grams.

The WHO set an acceptable daily intake of the stuff at 0.01 mg/kg/day.