Malaria, a travel health problem in the maritime community

Background:Th ree to five hundred mi [lion cases of mala ria occur annually , causing over one to two million deaths. Malaria is one of the leading ca uses of fever, resulting from travel in tropical or subtropical countries t hat risk is very high, especially for sailors. By the nature of their job t hey cannot avoid malarial regions and generally suffer from the lack of med ical help aboard, insufficient knowledge of preventive measures, and lack o f up-to-date information about chloroquine resistant areas. Methods: Retrospective analysis em braced all cases of malaria among seafar ers employed in the years 1990-1993 by the Croatian sea carrier Losinjska P lovid ba, and cases treated at the Clinic for Infectious Diseases, Rijeka, in the same period. Results: In that period, among seafarers treated in our Port Health Office there were registered 23 cases of malaria; 19 cases among sailors and 4 amo ng tourists, all of them aboard merchant ships. Among seafarers treated in the Clinic for Infectious Diseases from 1990-1993 there were 13 malaria pat ients, 12 of them sailors and 1 tourist. Conclusion:The aim of this work is to study the morbidity of malaria on boa rd ships owned by the Croatian shipping company Loginjska Plovidba in the 4 -year period 1990-1993 and point to the lack of a health system for their h ealth protection. It can be concluded that the severity of malaria, the num ber of complications, the period of disablement for work, permanent health damage in a marked number of young persons on duty a broad, a [I clearly de monstrate the individual and social costs of this disease in Croatia and th e maritime community worldwide.