Mosquito bite triggered battle to save my life

THE pesky sound of a buzzing insect somewhere in the darkness of his hotel room was just a minor irritation at the end of a long business trip.

Banking consultant Roy Dewar was in Uganda. He was a seasoned traveller who'd lived most of his life abroad and managed to survive it all apart from a minor brush with hepatitis and jaundice in Karachi.

"Everyone gets hepatitis and jaundice there," he says with a shrug.

What harm could a little buzzing insect do in his Ugandan bedroom other than disturb his longing for uninterrupted sleep?

A few days later and Roy was back in Edinburgh, lying in bed, clinging to life in hospital with one of the deadliest forms of malaria.

His flesh and eyes had turned a sickly shade of yellow as his kidneys and his liver gradually shut down.

The strain of malaria - one of the most deadly there is - was heading for his brain.

Medics, racing against time, had to stop its progress before he lost his life to a mosquito bite.

It was a dramatic reality check for the retired banker.

Suddenly his complacent attitude to anti-malarial tablets had come home to roost in the most terrifying manner possible.

"I was blas about it," he readily admits.

"I was thinking 'I've been in all these places around the world for so many years and never had any problems.

I don't need to bother taking any tablets'.

"I was wrong, I should have taken them."

That said, taking any old malaria tablets might not provide the ultimate protection against an illness that every year kills up to three million people.

As X Factor celebrity judge Cheryl Cole is discovering, malaria can come in many forms.

She holidayed in Tanzania last month, a relaxing break after a busy year that had seen her solo career take off and the high profile collapse of her marriage.

She is reported to have taken a full course of malaria tablets during her stay.

However as Roy, who now helps highlight the risks of malaria through the nationwide Malaria Awareness Campaign, points out: "You have to take the right anti-malarial drugs for the area you're going to."

He adds: "I'm very lucky I'm still here, and I'm not going to be complacent about malaria ever again."

As a banker, Roy, 65, from Corstorphine, spent large chunks of his career in exotic, tropical lands.

Among his placements abroad were spells working in Kenya, Botswana and Swaziland, Rwanda, Uganda, and Dubai.

"I retired from my last job in 1999 after five years in Africa," he recalls.

"I hadn't bothered to take anti-malarial tablets for years. I slept under a mosquito net and I did rub on Deet (diethyl-meta-toluamide) insect repellent.

"I really didn't think too much about it."

He was working as a consultant three years ago when he arrived in Uganda for a three week visit.

"I'd had a couple of bites but didn't think anything of it," he says.

"In fact, I always thought I didn't really get bitten.

"I remember waking up one night and hearing a buzzing noise.

"The first real sign that something wasn't right was a lack of appetite, I didn't feel like eating anything and when I did I felt nauseous.

"I remember sitting outside, it was a warm evening but I was shivering.

"Later, I was sitting in an office with my computer screen in front of me but it was blurred. I had my reading glasses on, but I couldn't make out what was on the screen.

He adds: "It felt like the flu."

Roy was preparing to go to the airport to fly home when he collapsed.

However, hospital tests failed to confirm that he was suffering from malaria.

"I think the incubation period varies and it simply didn't show up in the tests," says Roy.

He set off to fly home but was so weak he had to use a wheelchair to get from the airport terminal to his flight.

"By the time I got home to Edinburgh I couldn't face going to hospital, I just wanted to go to bed," he adds.

Next day Roy's condition had deteriorated severely.

"The staff at the Royal Infirmary and later at the Western General hospitals were excellent," he recalls.

"Within an hour and a half they had confirmed I had the worst form of malaria."

Roy tested positive for plasmodium falciparum, malaria's deadliest form, responsible for 90 per cent of malaria deaths.

He was admitted to the high dependency unit at the Western's tropical diseases unit and fed intravenous quinine.

After 11 days treatment, he was discharged with three weeks' worth of antibiotics.

Luckily, the strain of malaria that he contracted is unlikely to recur. Others, as Roy points out, can lie dormant within a patient's system and re-emerge on a regular basis with flu-like symptoms.

"I suppose I was lucky in a lot of ways," he reflects.

"It was lucky I was due to head home because I believe if I'd stayed in Uganda, I would have died.

"It wasn't particularly painful to go through, but it was terrible for my family."

Today Roy is fully recovered, and eager to ensure that his experience can help prevent malaria in other travellers.

"I've been to South Africa since it and I made sure I took the right anti-malarial tablets."

He adds: "I nag anyone who is travelling to make sure they do too.

"It's much better to take the correct tablets and not get malaria than risk getting it."

For more details and information about malaria, pay a visit to www.malariahotspots.com

POISONOUS PEST

Malaria is preventable yet still kills around three million people a year worldwide.

UK travellers bring home one of the highest rates of malaria incidents in Europe.

A single bite from a carrier mosquito can lead to malaria.

Untreated, malaria can be fatal. The deadliest strain of malaria can kill within just 24 hours.

Symptoms can be non-specific and include fever, chills, joint pain, weakness, muscular aches, vomiting, diarrhoea and abdominal pain.

It can take a year for symptoms of malaria to appear.

Every year between 1999 and 2008, an average of 1800 people returned to the UK with malaria. During that period, an average of nine people a year died from malaria in the UK.

Travellers in malaria-affected zones should wear light coloured, long-sleeved clothes, trousers and socks, take anti-malarial tablets and use repellents regularly..