Taiwanese college student critically ill with malaria after Kenya trip

台灣大學生在肯亞旅行後染上瘧疾

The college student infected with malaria also stopped in Hong Kong mid-August after returning home


TAIPEI (Taiwan News) -- A male college student who joined a six-week summer volunteer program in Kenya has been confirmed as having malaria, two weeks after returning home to Kaohsiung, where he has fallen critically ill, according to a local health official on Sunday.

This is also the first imported case of malaria in Kaohsiung this year.

Kaohsiung's Disease Control division head Pan Chao-ying (潘炤穎) said that the ten other participants in the same volunteer program had not developed malaria symptoms.

The team flew to Kenya on June 28 and left on Aug. 3. After returning home to Kaohsiung, the college student went back to his school in Hsinchu, and also traveled to Hong Kong from Aug.13-15. He began to develop symptoms on Aug. 15 and was admitted to an intensive care unit on Aug. 17 because of high fever and impaired consciousness.

The sick college student is said to have taken an incomplete course of the antimalarial drug Quinine, which provided him with less protection than is usually prescribed for trips to certain African countries.

Pan said that an incubation period after infection with malaria by a mosquito bite and the development of symptoms is usually 10 days or longer, so the health department assumes the college student was infected in Kenya.

The health department is said to have taken initial preventive measures targeting the home and neighborhood of the college student to prevent the spread of the infectious disease.