Weblogs

Pregnant woman arrives at the Maternity. She is worried because she had to leave her kids at home and the River Jurua is about to flood the area, so coming to the Maternity (which involves getting a boat lift from a neighbour and then walking 1.5 km)is a great deal. She is 31 weeks into her pregnancy. Two weeks ago she had a malaria episode, Pf, and was given Quinine and Clindamycin. Now she has diarrhea, lower abdominal pain, 9 g/dL of hemoglobin, 29% hematocrit.

Pop-quiz: You're not an MD, you are conducting research in a malaria endemic setting and you are not part of the local health system. You overhear a doctor prescribing the wrong malaria drug treatment to a pregnant woman. What do you do?

In malaria endemic areas, researchers and basic health workers need to and often do find ways to join forces and complement each others work. Nevertheless, the prevalent idea among a few who are higher up in the health services is that researchers, like myself, are only there for the "kill". Some of the complaints are that we have a limited time-span in the area, we take joy in seeing a patient who provides us with some parasites and we ultimately take without giving in return. I think that these are usually the things we hear most (and mostly through the grapevine...).