QUESTION

How to identify malaria? My son has fever and headache for the past three days and also vomiting. Is treatment is necessary and what type of treatment he needs?

ANSWER

You need to take your son to the doctor or to a clinic where they can do a blood test to look for malaria. They will either look at his blood under a microscope or use his blood in a “rapid diagnostic test” (RDT), both of which can identify the presence of the malaria parasites in his blood. If he is positively diagnosed with malaria, then your son should receive treatment, probably a type of artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) – common brands include Coartem, Lonart and Alu (though there are many others). These are what the World Health Organisation recommends as first line treatment against non-severe malaria.

Given your son’s symptoms, you should certainly go for a malaria test, just in case. However, vomiting is not usually a symptoms associated with malaria, so it is also possible he has another infection, such as an intestinal parasite, or even a bacterial or viral infection. Unfortunately, the symptoms of malaria are very general, so you really need to have one of the blood tests I mention above in order to be sure that your son has malaria.