Healthy Living and Fitness

Illness Care: Malaria

Diagnosis

Because a bout of malaria can feel like the sudden onset of influenza, it's important to tell your doctor about recent travel (up to a year or more earlier) to a malaria risk area so that he or she can consider a malaria diagnosis. Your doctor may suspect that you have malaria based on your symptoms and your history of foreign travel.

To confirm the diagnosis of malaria, your doctor will take samples of blood to be smeared on glass slides to make a blood film. These blood smears will be stained with special chemicals in the laboratory and examined for the presence of Plasmodium parasites. In some cases films may be negative even when the disease is quite far advanced so a prudent doctor will repeat the test after twelve hours or, if the patient is showing signs of complications and the diagnosis is likely, they will treat the patient anyway. If a diagnosis of P. falciparum malaria is made or strongly suspected, early treatment is imperative to avoid the complications of an overwhelming infection.

It is worth noting that falsely positive and falsely negative examinations happen frequently in developing countries.

 

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