What Are Malaria Symptoms?
February 16th, 2009 by Peter Plantier, under Travel and Leisure. No Comments
The important thing to know about malaria symptoms is that there is variation in the incubation period of each case. This is the time taken for the signs of the illness to be noticeable after the initial infection.
The normal incubation period is between 9 and 14 days. Nevertheless symptoms could appear in as little as 7 days or the body can host the virus for as long as between 18 to 40 days. On occasion the disease has been known to take even up to 10 months to manifest.
Causes for this delay.
Built up body immunity of a person and if they are in general good health can delay manifestation of the disease.
It is also possible to find that a person can be infected but is not showing any signs because they are taking preventive medication.
What is important to know is that especially at the onset, what are malaria symptoms may not follow a specific pattern and one should not strictly use the time factor as the basis for diagnosis. The infection could be present, showing little or no symptoms and yet continue to deteriorate because of staying unattended.
Signs to watch for.
– fever
– chills
– vomiting and nausea
– appetite loss
– Splitting headaches
sweats
– lethargy
– tiredness
– dry cough
– muscle and back pain
– An enlarged liver and spleen
Get that fever properly diagnosed, it is the earliest sign of malaria. And keep in mind that an attack of the disease can be very subtle.
Severe malaria.
If unattended the disease will become more serious, in which case these symptoms could be experienced:
– jaundice symptoms
– seizures
– shock and coma
– Liver failure and kidney failure
- a change in the mental state and the onset of cerebral malaria
So if you find you have any or some of these malaria symptoms, get an early diagnosis. Remember that malaria kills.
