[DUMBGRUNT]

More than a few of my RVN buddies picked up a case of malaria. Yes we all took the pills.

One friend became very sick about two months after discharge. He went a few local Physicians, no luck! He said the Doc at the VA knew the minute he walked in!!

[Mr. Douglas]

This is crazy! Don’t they have DDT down there?

[Jane Long]

Terrible.

I’ve been wondering how our athletes and news crews have been protected...or, if they’ve been protected.

Were there giant nets over the arenas and news platforms? Ha!

[Ancesthntr]

Best wishes for her quick and complete recovery.

But one has to wonder what would possess someone from a First World nation with virtually no chance of having been exposed - and therefore no chance to build up resistance - to diseases like malaria and whatever else she is suffering from. With due respect to her and her family, and my sincere wish that she recover, I think that she did this to herself. There are less dangerous means of giving to, or helping to raise money for, charity.

[uncitizen]

It’s malaria, not zika, right?

[eyeamok]

Rachel Carson strikes again!

[wastoute]

I have actually seen several patients with malaria. Some of the sickest one will ever see and if you have seen it once you never forget!

[sailor76]

One friend became very sick about two months after discharge.

Sounds like he had the Vivax strain with a 6mo+ incubation period. I've had it too. It also sounds like the reporter has the much more dangerous falciparum strain with a week or two incubation and if left untreated can kill you in a few days.

[laplata]

A buddy of mine didn’t take his pills and got malaria after he was discharged. I think we had to take the pills for 21 days after leaving Nam but can’t remember.

[Enterprise]

[bgill]

The Ride to Rio left the UK on 27 June, with Ms Webster and her colleagues cycling 90 miles a day with only one rest day each week before arriving at the Maracana stadium on 4 August.

Cycling across the Atlantic should have done them all in. Stupid reporter tricks.

[Billthedrill]

Ugly stuff (not to quibble, OK, well, to quibble, it isn't bacterial, the organism is a protozoan, a Plasmodium). My late Dad picked up a dose of it in Africa during WW2. Some years later my Mom, a new nurse, finally talked him into donating blood - Dad hated needles - and they didn't ask him the screening questions until the blood was actually flowing. After which he watched them pour it down the drain. During their fifty years of marriage and her subsequent medical career I don't think I heard him mention it more than a few thousand times...

[Polyxene]

Wonder how many other people will either come back from Rio sick or get sick when they return to the US?

[chaosagent]

We lived in Colombia, SA in the early 60’s when I was 13 or so. Picked up a mild case of malaria, even though I was taking the pills.

For the next ten years or so, I would get relapses every other year or so that gradually lessened over time.

It was not a fun experience.

[Gay State Conservative]

I've been told that skeeters in different areas are resistant to different anti-malarials.So assuming that she was taking *something* it may have been the wrong thing for where she got the bad bite.