print gohome Print Edition Photo by: Courtesy Health Scan:
Higher malaria risk for elderly tourists Elderly tourists to
countries with endemic malaria at higher risk of death than
younger ones. Israeli tropical disease researcher Prof. Eli
Schwartz was the first in the world to discover and report a
decade ago that elderly people who visit a country where malaria
is endemic are almost 10 times more likely to die from the
disease than younger people. Later, a European study reached the
same conclusion, and just recently the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine and the University of Oxford did the same.
“They have confirmed our Israeli findings from 10 years ago,”
said Schwartz, who runs a travel clinic for tropical medicine
and tourist diseases at Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
“These elderly people are usually businessmen who go to Africa
and do not like taking prophylactic medication against malaria.
They are not aware of their increased risk, even though I have
several times tried to pe