Malaria: A Serious Threat to our Military

[Stan]

SGM,
That's nothing more than a darn shame.
Our EOD elements have deployed on 6 rotations to Afghanistan without one incident. Our Rescue Team's paramedic checked the CDC site and ordered the prescriptions for 65 of us. "Take these" he said.

Later our Disaster Relief Team would go to provide relief to the Tsunami victims. Same story, take this and don't stop.

Hey Nichols,
I would agree 100 percent, easy to control a small MTT or detachment, but an entire company may play hell.

Perhaps better we didn't have access to mefloquine in the early 80's. I think I would rather be crazy with a failing liver

Regards, Stan

[nichols]

Stan,

I had the best of both worlds, the chloroquine liver failure potential from the Central American vacation trips in the early 80s and the mefloquine is this live or memorix surreal dreams in the 90's.

Either way, they'll get ya in the long run

[RTK]

Doxycyclene is a wonderful prophelactic drug that covers 11 of the 13 most prevelent communicatable diseases in Southwest Asia. For some reason, however, the prophelactic program was shut down after OIF II (some say it was a $$$ issue). After two years in Iraq, in which I ate more times than I can count off the economy in some pretty mosquito and sand flea infested areas, I never tested positive for anything. I took Doxy both years, one 250 mg pill a day. Others haven't been so lucky.

[Stan]

Hey RTK and Nichols !

Doxy was the Army's wonder and fix all in Korea. No, we are not going to discuss my doxy treatments

My 1970's Central American trip was just that ! A dull grey C130, no tail number, and 2 each of Bob, Dave and Tom aboard.

We did however have malaria meds

RTK,
Your promised the story behind that trophy ! I know you secretly won it racing HDs !!!

Stan

[RTK]

Hey RTK and Nichols !

Doxy was the Army's wonder and fix all in Korea. No, we are not going to discuss my doxy treatments

My 1970's Central American trip was just that ! A dull grey C130, no tail number, and 2 each of Bob, Dave and Tom aboard.

We did however have malaria meds

RTK,
Your promised the story behind that trophy ! I know you secretly won it racing HDs !!!

Stan

I'm still working at it (and trying to find the time to do it justice). My time these past few weeks has been dominated by training America's best 2LTs to be experts in reconnaissance.

I will get to it....

[Stan]

RTK,
I wish you the best of luck with the butter bars !

I trained LTCs

Far easier via the stick and the carrot !

[Tom Odom]

Stan and I faced the dillemma of how long do you take the stuff--Stan of course was there years longer than I was.

In our animal house existence in Kigali with 3-5 guys living tgether, we scheduled our pill days so the others would know what to watch for.

Still some guys would not take mefloquine--the doctors said limit it to 6 months but never said what to do for the other 6 months--and paid the price. Cerbral malaria was a killer and my retired Royal Engineer who was chief of party for my demining dogs keeled over in the club one evening after I had left the country for good. He woke up in South Africa; he was lucky.

Tom

[nichols]

OT....Strawberries flown in from South Africa, what a luxury that was. Of course I was way to cheap to buy them myself.