An Israeli couple went to visit their daughter in Africa – and contracted malaria

The 58-year-old couple Sharon and Oren Goldstein went through a long and exhausting journey to arrive together at a life-saving hospital in the Rambam internal ward.Sharon, a dietitian by profession and Oren an architect. They live in the Yakneam settlement, and about two weeks ago they flew to a remote village in Ghana in West Africa. “Our daughter Michal is a student studying for a master’s degree in African studies,” says Sharon, “her research topic is an activity to empower young girls in Ghana through learning to surf. She is researching the initiative and also surfs there, so we decided to fly to visit her.”

Sharon says that before they left, they consulted a traveler’s clinic, where they were advised to take anti-malaria pills. The couple arrived equipped with pills, and Oren confirms that the instructions they received were unequivocal – to take them one day before arriving in Africa. In practice, they did fly with the balls but did not use them. “‘You don’t need pills, there are no mosquitoes, there is no malaria,’ they told us when we arrived at the village on the ocean where the local girls surf,” they say.

“Sharon started to feel unwell and two days before the flight back to Israel she already returned home,” recalls Oren, “I felt fine until we landed in Israel.” “They scared us of the side effects that might happen when taking these pills, but I have already flown to India before, I took the pills and I had no side effects,” says Sharon when she hits on sin.

When the couple landed in Israel both were already suffering from fever and weakness. The first test that Oren performed provided a negative answer for malaria, but since Sharon was positive for the dangerous disease – the doctor at Rambam’s emergency department insisted on admitting both of them. When they were weak and in pain, they stayed side by side in the internal ward of the hospital, and after another test it turned out that Oren was also infected with malaria, even a violent strain More than when his wife fell ill. The Rambam doctors make it clear that without medical treatment his life was in danger.

A dangerous disease that can kill

Malaria kills over half a million people worldwide every year. Dr. Ami Neuberger, director of the internal medicine department at Rambam and an expert in travel medicine, explains that it is caused by a parasite that enters the body through the bite of the Anopheles mosquito. He emphasizes that the mosquito is indeed still found in Israel, but thankfully – the parasite is no longer there. “The disease is dangerous mainly for children and people over the age of 40, but anyone who gets malaria for the first time experiences a very unpleasant event, at best. Most of the malaria patients who are treated in Israel are infected in African countries, and a minority in Asia or Latin America,” he notes.

According to him, the preventive treatment given with pills is very effective, and in fact almost everyone who got malaria was not treated with the preventive treatment. “For 20 years now, all the malaria patients who came to Rambam for treatment were people who simply did not take preventive treatment. In case of infection – without such treatment, a diagnosis must be made urgently. The parasite keeps multiplying inside the red blood cells, and a delay in treatment increases the chance of complications and death. The treatment actually prevents the damage to the red blood cells.”

The couple are now recovering, and emphasize: “When traveling to a country where there is a chance of contracting malaria, you don’t need to play games – just take the preventive medicine and avoid danger.”