[AriseAndPass]

I grew up in Tanzania! Can I ask where you were, and what you were doing?

BTW - I had malaria about 5-6 times while growing up. What you describe sounds like a particularly bad case (1-2 of mine were like that). My experience, and that of my peer group (lower-middle class by western standards, top 0.1% by Tanzanian standards) was that if you got an early diagnosis and had access to drugs it was usually akin to a severe flu unless you got unlucky with the strain/severity.

It was culturally very normalised to get two malaria tests any time anyone felt sick, because the commonly accepted belief was that anything could be malaria, and false negatives were too common.

I always thought the main problem with malaria in Tanzania was that 99.9% of the country (especially rural areas) does not have access to quick testing and easy drugs, and for them it's a death sentence. That's not to downplay it, but more to emphasise the socioeconomic dimension.

[cguess]

I caught it in Arusha (back in 2008, when Arusha was much less built up than it is now). Got sick about two weeks later outside of Dar. At the time I was a journalist working on some freelance stories.

I've actually gone back and worked with local duka la dawas (sorry about the spelling, my Kiswahili is really out of practice) in figuring out ways we can help rural populations get easier access to the medication. It's often not that it's not there, it's that the medicine is too expensive.

It's still such a horror show of a disease (among the many many other horror show diseases). My heart broke for every mother I saw with their feverish infants in the same waiting room I was in.

[AriseAndPass]

Very cool story. Thank you for whatever you've done to help :) (and your spelling looks perfect to me).