On the coast in Ecuador there are TONS of mosquitoes during the rainy season. Over the past week and a half, we have had rain almost everyday in Guayaquil….which means more potential breeding ground for mosquitoes!!
In our apartment we haven’t had that many issues with mosquitoes but there have been a couple of mornings where I have woken up with 10+ new bites on my arms and legs. I plan to put up my mosquito net this week ….that way when it gets really hot and muggy at night, I won’t have to use my covers to protect from mosquitoes.
When I was first told by the Peace Corps that I would need to take anti-malarial meds for my two years of service, I didn’t think much about. Prior to my trip to Liberia two summers ago, I was prescribed Lariam or mefloquine by my Dad and the California Pacific Travel Clinic, so I was familiar that the medication had some severe side effects — the ones that stand out in my memory are vivid dreams and hallucinations.
Mefloquine is used to prevent (and sometimes treat) malaria, a disease which kills more than 1 million people worldwide each year, and is the second most deadly disease, after tuberculosis. Mefloquine is over 90 percent effective when used in prevention, and saves many thousands of lives annually. Last year it was prescribed at least half a million times. Most who take it for prevention have only mild side effects or none at all. A lot of volunteers from my omnibus experienced stomach issues with their meds and therefore were switched over to another anti-malaria called doxyscycline. I have been taking my malaria pill once a week, every Friday for about four months now and I have only experienced minor side effects such as vivid dreams with the occasional nightmare. The best way to describe anti-malaria dreams is that everything is more vivid and realistic. A few weeks ago, I awoke from a dream and saw a large black tarantula spider on my pillow. I blinked my eyes twice to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming ….and yet the spider was still there. I jumped out of bed and quickly turned on the light to find that there was no spider in my bed and it had just been a hallucination.
Larium Meds
But there is convincing evidence that the drug exposes a small number of travelers to traumatic and sometimes bizarre neuropsychiatric reactions. Reports of side effects from mefloquine exposure include hallucinations, sleeplessness, paranoia, psychotic episodes and suicide attempts. Some users complain of effects persisting for weeks or months, even years. These reactions are documented in scientific studies, surveys and in thousands of case reports in the files of Lariam’s manufacturer, the Swiss firm Hoffmann-LaRoche, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Adverse reactions were noticed by the manufacturer and public health officials soon after the drug was approved. The manufacturer twice agreed to revise the label to list more, and more serious, side effects, including psychiatric ones. Regulators in the United Kingdom had already required explicit consumer warnings, and in 1997 the U.K.’s Malaria Advisory Committee stopped recommending mefloquine for travelers headed to malarial regions for two weeks or less.
It makes me wonder if taking this medication for two years will do any long-term damage to my health. Who knows! Overall, I don’t mind the vivid dreams…actually I think there are pretty amazing sometimes. Last night I dreamed I was flying over a lush, green Amazon jungle (anyone whos seen the opening scene to the movie Avatar or BBC’s Planet Earth will know exactly what my dream felt like).
