Lake Neuron

I had to take an anti-malarial drug during both my 2003 mission trip to rural Nicaragua and the last few days of my 2004 trip to Kenya. (There was no malaria risk in Nairobi; the drug was prescribed for our end-of-trip safari.)

Malaria is a problem throughout the developing world, and now a new treatment is being developed combining a Chinese herbal medicine with traditional antibiotics. Malaria is becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics alone, but using the antibiotics in connection with wormwood extract seems to provide an effective treatment.

We were told during our training for Nicaragua that if we had some minor illness and our host family offered us a remedial tea or extract, we should take it — it would do us no harm (as long as the water had been boiled!), and could potentially turn out to be effective.

Bill and Melinda Gates’ charitable foundation is contributing a large sum to help develop the new malaria treatment.