Hospital consultant who nearly died from malaria

It was a month after he returned from Cambodia perfectly fit and well and suddenly in Finland he found himself fighting for his life with malaria.

"I thought I was going to die," said Dr Read, a consultant gastroenterologist and psychotherapist from Sheffield. "It sounds terribly dramatic but I really thought I was on the way out. I heard the results coming through and if I'd been the doctor, I think I would have

been thinking, 'We're going to lose this one'."

Before leaving for his five-week trip to South-East Asia, Dr Read, 65, consulted his practice nurse about anti-malarial drugs.

As he was concerned about the possible side-effects from Malarone, which can cause nausea – Dr Read decided to wait until he reached Laos before starting the course.

With his partner, Joan, he first travelled to Cambodia where he visited his son Alex who works for a charity there. The holiday included a trip to the Cardamom Hills in the jungle, which is where he believes he was bitten by a malaria-carrying mosquito.

"We had a night out in the jungle sleeping in hammocks in Cambodia and there were a lot of mosquitoes," he said. "I hadn't expected to go down to southern Cambodia and I think had I said to the practice nurse, 'I'm going to be camping near the river', she would have said, 'You'd better take the tablets earlier'."

From Cambodia, the couple went trekking in Laos where they stayed with a local community near the Chinese border before finishing up in Hanoi, Vietnam.

He felt well during his travels in January and so afterwards headed to snow-capped Finland for a cross-country skiing trip.

Here at first the symptoms started every couple of days.

"I had this headache over the whole of the top of my head. It was a persistent dull ache that makes your scalp so sensitive you can't bear anyone to touch it," he said.

At first in the morning, he felt well enough to ski, but a couple of days later he came down with a fever.

"It was getting worse," he said. "I'd gone skiing and I'd fallen off the skis into the snow. I came back and Joan said I was delirious. She was so worried she called the paramedics."

Initially he was taken to a small hospital in rural Finland but his condition was so serious, an ambulance whipped him off to a larger hospital in Oulu.

"We had to wait in casualty for about eight hours before anybody saw me. I was really worried about it because as a medical student I remember being taught 'five fevers and you're out'. People don't usually survive after five bouts of malarial fever, so I thought I'm up to four, this is serious. Eventually the consultant did see me about four o'clock in the morning, then all I remember is they were saying to me, 'We can't get your platelet count'."

He was diagnosed with Plasmodium vifax, a serious form of malaria which causes little clots to develop in the blood. The most lethal strain is Plasmodium falciparum, which kills around nine people a year in the UK alone.

"One of the things that malaria does is it causes little clots to develop in the blood itself so it mops up all the platelets that would normally stop clotting. You're very susceptible to bleeding, but you're also susceptible to damage to organs because of these little clots."

The Finnish doctors also told him he was dangerously anaemic. "I

thought I don't want to die, there's a lot I still want to do. I'd

better make sure I get over this," he said.

He was given a course of Quinine, followed by a new treatment,

Artemesininin, based on a 2,000-year-old Chinese remedy.

After a week in hospital, he felt well enough to discharge himself and was flown home by private jet thanks to his insurance.

Dr Read believes he may not have been so fortunate, had he not been so physically fit – he runs three or four miles a day, and practises yoga for an hour every morning.

As well as his work at the Claremont Hospital, where he treats patients with unexplained illnesses such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), chronic fatigue syndrome and eating disorders, Dr Read runs The Gut Trust, a charity for people with IBS and is a keen proponent of complementary therapy.

Malaria is treatable, if caught in time, but once it is in your system, it is difficult to eradicate it completely. He suffered another bout during a trip to India last month, while he was teaching at a Mind and Body Camp.

But, incredibly, the experience has not put him off travelling to high-risk areas. He is planning another visit to South-East Asia in January next year, but says he would make sure he started a course of anti-malarial tablets before going back.

"I don't like taking tablets," said Dr Read. "But I'm not that daft; I would go and check with the doctor beforehand. Malaria is one of the most serious illnesses you can get and people need to be careful. You can't afford to be too cavalier about it."

Malaria – The facts

n The disease is responsible for at least a million deaths each year.

n It is caused by one of several different species of single-celled parasites.

n Symptoms include fever, shaking, headaches and pain.

n Serious infection can be very dangerous as the small blood vessels of the brain can be blocked.

n It is passed from person to person by certain species of mosquito which breed in stagnant water.

n The parasites breed in the blood but can also settle in the liver.

n Treatment is with anti-malarial drugs.