What should you know about malaria in sickle cell disease?

Sickle cell disease changes the shape and survival of red blood cells. Malaria parasites use red blood cells during their life cycle, so infection can add to anaemia, inflammation and physical stress. Symptoms may include fatigue, pale skin, fever or joint pain, and a malaria infection can be confused with a sickle cell crisis or trigger one. A Blood Test helps clinicians distinguish these problems and assess the blood.

Contact your sickle cell team or urgent medical service promptly for fever after travel or mosquito exposure. Explain your usual baseline, recent pain episodes, travel destination, preventive medicines and current treatments. Keep taking regular medicines unless your clinician tells you otherwise, and drink according to your personalised sickle cell plan. Do not delay assessment while trying home remedies or leftover antimalarial medicine.

Seek emergency care for fever with severe pain, unusual sleepiness, confusion, breathing difficulty, chest pain, fainting, marked weakness, inability to drink or rapidly worsening symptoms. Ask the team to consider both malaria and a sickle cell complication. Early assessment can guide blood tests, fluids, antimalarial treatment and other care without assuming that every fever has the same cause.

Ask how malaria will be tested, which symptoms suggest a sickle cell crisis, whether your usual medicines need adjustment, and what travel prevention plan fits your condition.