Help! Traveling to Raja and forgot malaria meds!

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Many thanks Dan! We catch Mermaid 1 on Jan. 12. Our first time outside the carribean and we so so excited to check this off our bucket list!

Mermaid 1 still is the best liveaboard I have ever taken, better than the Galápagos Master that I paid twice as much last week. The DM, service, food & of course the dive sites are fantastic! You will definitely won't be disappointed.

Just make sure you take care your ears, equalizing as often as you can, regardless whhether you feel the pressure or not, for the fist 30' when the hydraulic pressure doubles.

Enjoy it!
Dan
 
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Many thanks Dan! We catch Mermaid 1 on Jan. 12. Our first time outside the carribean and we so so excited to check this off our bucket list!
If you are mostly on the liveaboard, you will find that most if not all passengers won't have taken antimalarials. On more than a dozen trips to Indonesia we have ever taken antimalarials and can never recall hearing that other travellers were taking them.

Enjoy your trip.
 
Well, I know a diver who got malaria, just because she hung around in Sorong, surrounding villages & woods often without anti malaria med and without spraying herself with the mosquito repellent. She was just asking for trouble.
 
I don't think you will have any issue with Malaria in Manado. Unless you go jungle trekking in the remote part of Sulawesi, otherwise I think you will be fine..
 
Many medications are sold over the counter in Indonesia. We were able to purchase Doxycycline in Bali at a local pharmacy (apotek). There are many apoteks in Sorong along the main strip. If you are really worried, have your driver pop in one and see if you can purchase. They make Doxycycline locally in Indonesia and it's usually very inexpensive.

However, having said that, if you purchase repellent (which is readily available) and cover up you should be fine. Mosquitoes aren't usually and issue at sea, so in Sorong and when you go trekking take precautions, otherwise have fun!
 
Personally i think dengue is a bigger worry than malaria. Just use repellents and you should be fine.
 
Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time in malaria areas, often without meds, I would agree with most posts here. One thing to look out for, as explained to me by the medics and borne out over 2 decades of observation since:

Western tourist type people die from malaria because it is not diagnosed. The usual sequence is that the person takes prophylaxis, has a holiday and comes home. Malaria has an incubation period, so at some future point they develop symptoms (like cold/flu). They self-medicate for a week or two until they feel really terrible, then they go to the doctor.

Usually they are not thinking malaria (I took meds, must be fine!) and they don't tell the doc that they were in a malaria area. They progressively get worse until eventually someone makes the correct diagnosis by which time there is usually serious liver / organ damage or they get cerebral malaria and then its not good at all.

The secret is to be TOTALLY paranoid over malaria for up to a year after your trip. If you get cold / flu symptoms that dont go away after a couple of days, go get a malaria test. They are quick, cheap and effective. If you have it and you have only been symptomatic for a couple of days, chances of successful treatment are very good (ask me, I spent 4 days getting jabs and malaria all gone).

This is regardless of whether you took meds, many strains are resistant to a lot of the meds out there.

I am not a doctor, I do play one at home if I'm lucky so hopefully someone like @Duke Dive Medicine could chime in. I also suspect that some of the meds may not be conducive to diving, Lariam made me loopy and one of my colleagues had a breakdown from that stuff. There is also a question mark over Doxy use, it's an antibiotic and there are a lot of issues being raised over antibiotic use causing drug resistant illnesses to proliferate etc, I personally try to avoid "unnecessary" AB use.

Long clothes, spray and don't take chances when you get back, enjoy Indo I'm terribly jealous!
 

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