Originally Created For: Unorthodox Travel
Author: Mariam Amini
Original Article Link: Dealing with dengue – a travel tale with newfound hope – Unorthodox Travel
I was working on a hostel terrace in the heart of Chinatown Kuala Lumpur last year, when disaster struck.
The intense itch of mosquito bites is something you wish you could get used to. But as it stands, the itch isn’t even the worst part.
This is something I had to learn the hard way, after one particular bite ended with both me and my partner contracting dengue fever.
It all started with some body aches and chills in the middle of the night. At the time, Covid-19 had already started to spread across the globe, so this was my immediate first worry.
However, with no coughing, shortness of breath or loss of smell or taste experienced, we felt it was fairly safe to rule this out.
I was only a couple days into dealing with dengue, when we had to leave Kuala Lumpur for Penang. By now my fever had thankfully gone down, but the aches and body pain remained.
For my partner, it was during our first night in Penang that his symptoms started to flare up. His fever was worse than mine, and the shivers were hard to stop.
It got so bad the next day that I had to call an ambulance. And so we were taken to the hospital, and directed to wait in an already packed sitting area outside in the sun.
We hadn’t eaten all day. We were already dehydrated. It only took a few minutes to realise we were better off back at our Airbnb.
So we called for a taxi and discreetly hobbled away, both still dizzy, heads still throbbing.
Though I still feel bad for wasting the ambulance’s efforts, only to leave shortly after, it was definitely the right call at the time.
Back at the Airbnb, we both dosed up on painkillers, and luckily his temperature began to come down.
I headed to the supermarket on my own shortly after, since we barely had any food. Having to suddenly be the ‘strong one’, though I hadn’t recovered myself certainly wasn’t fun. But it was needed.
The next few days were long and tiresome. A 5-minute walk to the pharmacy to stock up on more painkillers felt like a marathon.
But it was during this visit and a short chat with the pharmacist that we first considered it could be dengue fever.
I’m not quite sure why it took so long. All the symptoms seemed to marry up. High fever, headaches, muscle and joint pain, and finally a distinctive skin rash.
The rash came a little later, but it was what convinced us. We got tested at a PathLab conveniently down the road from us soon after, and it was confirmed.
Fortunately, dengue is a self-limiting virus, meaning it typically gets resolved on its own. Not so fortunately, there’s more than one strain.
Four to be exact, and apparently once you’ve had one strain it gets more dangerous if you get infected again.
Not the best news, considering how prevalent it’s become around the world. Did you know there are up to 400 million infections a year?
There’s no cure or specific treatment for dengue fever either, but there is a vaccine, though it is currently only available in a handful of countries.
Nevertheless, a recent trial in Yogyakarta city, Indonesia, fills me with more hope. The study saw scientists infect five million mosquito eggs with a harmless bacteria called Wolbachia.
This bacteria then competes for resources, essentially making it harder for the dengue virus to replicate. The findings? Dengue cases in the city were cut by 77%.
What’s more, the manipulative nature of Wolbachia lets it alter the fertility of its host, meaning the same dengue-preventing bacteria will be passed onto the next generation.
The breakthrough has been dubbed nothing short of miraculous, and indeed the possibilities now are unending.
Could this finally bring an end to a tropical disease that has been causing 25,000 deaths a year? Well, it’s definitely a strong start.