A malaria patient is treated in Bach Mai Hospital’s . (Photo: suckhoedoisong.vn)
Hanoi (VNS/VNA) – Doctors at Hanoi’s Bạch Mai Hospital have warned of the risk
of malaria from Africa as the hospital’s Centre for Tropical Diseases is
treating two malaria patients who returned from Angola recently.
For
many years, Hanoi and the northern provinces have had almost no malaria
patients, so the timely detection, diagnosis and treatment of malaria cases
returning from abroad in grass-roots health facilities is difficult and
easily missed.
Patient
Nguyen Dinh Th., 38, from the central province of Ha Tinh, returned home from
Angola one week ago.
Before,
he worked and lived in Angola for 12 years. Five days before being
hospitalised, he got a high fever, shivers and severe headaches. The fevers
mainly occurred in the afternoon twice a day, accompanied by painful
urination and loose stools.
The
patient went to a medical facility near his home, but doctors did not find any
disease, so he went to the Ha Tinh General Hospital in severe condition
and was transferred to the Centre for Tropical Diseases.
After
exploiting the epidemiological factors by doing blood tests, the doctors
discovered Plasmodium falciparum’s malaria parasite in his blood.
The
second patient is a 6-month pregnant woman in Hanoi. She worked in Angola for
eight years and just came back to Hanoi one week ago.
Three
days before the hospital admission, she had a high fever and severe chills,
mainly in the evening.
After
the fever, she sweated a lot, accompanied by vomiting, nausea and headaches.
She
went to a private clinic, was admitted to the National Institute of Malaria,
Parasitology and Entomology for testing and was diagnosed with malaria.
Due
to her pregnancy and low platelet disease, she was transferred to the Centre
for Tropical Diseases, where she was closely monitored.
According
to Associated Professor Do Duy Cuong, the centre’s director, both
patients developed fever right after returning to Vietnam, but the healthcare
facilities at the grass-roots level did not pay attention to the
epidemiological factor that they had been in Africa, so they did not
detect the disease.
Due
to the rampant atypical malaria symptoms, it was easy to confuse with other
diseases such as flu, COVID-19, dengue fever, or urinary infection, Cường said.
Cường
added: “In recent years, malaria in Vietnam had been controlled quite
successfully because we had effective malaria control programmes in localities
and adequate malarial medicines, so the rates of infection and mortality from
the disease had decreased significantly.”
“The
disease has now occurred only in a few provinces in the Central Highlands and
southern provinces.”
However,
the centre recently received many malaria patients from Africa, so it
is called “imported” malaria.
The
doctor said the reason was due to a lot of travel and the restoration of
flights for ese people returning home from Africa, especially from
Angola, after a period of COVID-19.
There
have been many warnings about malaria cases returning from Africa in recent
years, especially in those who returned from .
Therefore,
these people must declare epidemiological factors, monitor health and get
tested because malaria can become severe and life-threatening.
“We
had seen many cases of malaria becoming acute malaria with the symptom of
persistent high fever, which can cause patients to enter into a coma
for three to five days, which is life-threatening,” the doctor said.
“When
falling into a coma, patients can get multi-organ failure of the liver,
kidneys and lungs, or anaemia, convulsions and hypoglycemia,” he
said.
“However,
if treated promptly, the organ functions will gradually recover with the
right medicines.”
Currently,
the malaria medicines of Artesunate and Arterakin are provided under the
malaria prevention and control programme by the Ministry of Health./.
Source: VietnamPlus
