On 12 February I attended Kenya Medical Research Institutes Annual Scientific and Health Conference (11-14 Feb) which had sessions on malaria. The conference was held in the magnificent Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi and included plenty of food and a lovely lunch. And I got a nice bag (picture).
However, this was very much a medical establishment event and as a medical heretic I was either a fox in a henhouse or a chicken in a fox den!
The keynote address was by Feiko ter Kuile of Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who discussed their long-established research base in Kisimo that has grown from 50 to 450 researchers. He expressed concern about the Trump USAID actions. A research topic he discussed was SP (sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine) resistance and said DP (dihydroartemisinin‐piperaquine) had most potential, but SP is still better at preventing severe malaria. DP is a newer ACT not addressed in my book ‘Malaria is Spread by Mosquitos?’ and I will examine it in more detail later.
There were no topics of great interest at the morning scientific sessions. The main malaria session had a variety of the usual scientific topics highlighted in Malaria World each week. There was one talk about the evaluation of nutrition improvement for children 0-36 months in Rising Star session. However, I missed the talk and malaria is not mentioned in title.
I did ask both sessions if any of the presenters were aware of research on the effect of improved nutrition and clean water on the severity and occurrence of malaria and got no answer. One delegate did talk to me at the lunchbreak intrigued by my question.
The gulf between me and the allopathic medical establishment (and its belief in germ theory) was very clear at the poster session. Maurine Mwalo presented the paper by Obilo et al, ‘Updating Malaria Risk-Map of Kenya Through Diagnosis of Asymptomatic Malaria-Infected Individuals’. Just 3.6% of 13,719 tested were positive for plasmodia. And of these 490, 99.5% had no symptoms. They were treated with the ACT Artemether-Lumefantrine anyway.
I asked how it could be said that these 99.5% asymptomatic positive individuals had malaria if they were not ill. The presenter and the rest of the audience all said in unison ‘They have the parasite!’. It reminded me of the BS with COVID positives.
I attended a Symposium on tackling climate-driven zoonotic disease threats in East Africa. Topics included Ebola, Rift Valley Fever and Brucellosis. I don’t believe in viral illness but had no interest in getting involved. Brucellosis is a disease of cattle in Ireland but I have not heard of it being spread to humans. Curiously, its symptoms seem similar to malaria – 1) fever, 2) Another generic symptom, 3) positive test (for Brucella bacteria). Older people with symptoms are less likely to test positive than the young. I suspect that the bacteria, much like plasmodium in malaria is not the cause of the malady.