Travels from my 20s: Near-death from tropical disease

What started as a dream holiday in Africa became a nightmare as Ben West fought a deadly battle with malaria. Photo / Ben West
Despite his best intentions, including taking malaria tablets, Ben West returned home from his holiday in Cameroon with more than just good memories and photographs
The day I left Cameroon – my first visit to Africa, aged 22 – I felt fine.
However, the day after, back in London, I collapsed at Charing Cross Station, sweating profusely and shaking uncontrollably. In true British manner, the people around me pretended not to notice my ungainly behaviour as I toppled into a taxi, desperate to get home.
My neighbourhood doctor insisted I had influenza, even though I told her I had just returned from West Africa and had the tell-tale signs of malaria. These were regular cycles of fevers with sky-high temperatures followed by chills that several jumpers, duvets and blankets could not shake off. I became so weak I would spend nearly an hour trying to force myself to drink a glass of water.
READ MORE: Gisborne woman’s battle with malaria in South Sudan.
After a week of gradually worsening, I decided I was almost dead and demanded to be taken to hospital. My hitherto relaxed doctor suddenly changed her diagnosis and instructed one of my flatmates to immediately drive me to the local hospital, which specialised in tropical disease and possessed an isolation ward.
A doctor there immediately diagnosed malaria. In my indulgence I had picked up two strains: the most vicious, plasmodium falciparum (cerebral malaria, which can cause capillaries in vital organs to block at any time and cause death within 24 hours) and the milder plasmodium malariae.
Although I’d taken my malaria tablets while away, I got so drunk one night celebrating New Year’s Eve (having somehow gained access to a party on an American marine base) I fell asleep by a tree and awoke covered in loads of mosquito bites.
The mercury in the hospital thermometer consistently went past its markings. At this point I was jaundiced and hallucinating wildly. In my reverie the flowery curtains (they were ghastly – personally, I would have chosen something a bit more minimalist) sprung to life, with all manner of personalities hiding among the stems and petals, including Queen Victoria, Charlie Chaplin and Sid Vicious.
The consultant I was under, aptly named Dr Pain, tried various drug flow regimes without success. As there had been quite a delay in diagnosing the malaria, it had been able to take great hold in my body.
Running out of options, Dr Pain prescribed an intravenous drip of quinine. Quinine is the last resort for cases of malaria. It has been used to treat the disease since at least 1632 but is seldom used these days because it is toxic to the heart and has a whole host of potential tedious side effects, including possible blindness, deafness and death.
For me, it triggered an instant headache, difficulties with vision, tinnitus (which I have to this day), as well as blackwater fever. Blackwater fever is so named because it is characterised by your urine turning dark red as your red blood cells burst in the bloodstream, releasing haemoglobin directly into the blood vessels and into the urine, frequently leading to kidney failure.
A priest visited my bedside and asked whether there was anything I would like to say, clearly ready to give me the last rites as, I learned later, the doctors thought it very possible I wouldn’t last the night.
Fortunately, the quinine stemmed the malaria and within a few days I was ready to leave hospital.
When I left, a couple of stone lighter, I rang the father of my friend Janusz, who had accompanied me on the trip to Cameroon.
Janusz had not returned to Britain when expected. I learned he also fell victim to malaria and was staying in a very basic hospital in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon. It seemed to be rather challenging. Medical care and hygiene were at the bare minimum, and you’d starve if you didn’t have someone to bring in food and drink.
Nearly a year after my recovery from malaria, large swellings began to appear and then disappear around my body. There’d be one on one arm one day and then another would be on my leg the next. My new general practitioner expressed little interest and pronounced that, despite their large size, they were insect bites, allergies or my laundry powder.
Eventually, having self-diagnosed a form of filariasis – loiasis – when I read in a Sunday newspaper supplement about someone contracting the disease when they also visited Cameroon, I decided to visit London’s Hospital of Tropical Diseases.
Loiasis was swiftly confirmed, which I had picked up from the bite of a deerfly, which strikes in the day, as opposed to the mosquitoes that gave me malaria, which bite at night.
Few people have heard of filariasis despite it being one of the world’s most prevalent diseases. Loiasis is the mildest form of the disease, and although the symptoms are alarming, it does little harm – although the tiny worms travelling around the body that cause the swellings on the limbs can in some cases be seen crawling across the surface of the eye, hence its alternative name, African eye worm. Other filarial infections include river blindness, which can cause blindness, and elephantiasis, which can cause severe swelling of the arms, legs, genitals and breasts.
I had another stay in hospital. In the ward I was in the company of a dying Christian Scientist who had refused treatment for 10 years, an 8-year-old leper and a couple of ex-Japanese prisoners of war who had not returned to the tropics since the end of the World War II, but despite this were still having to be monitored regularly.
When I returned home I vowed never to go back to that hopelessly dangerous continent. However, soon afterwards I yearned to return to Africa, and went back the next year – without incident.