Malaria Medicine is Expensive

Wow, I purchased my malaria medicine last week and got extreme sticker shock! Almost $7.00 per pill! But if you don’t want to get Malaria, I guess you don’t have much of a choice. I had already spoken to my normal doctor and he said you would be stupid not to take the medicine because Malaria is nothing to fool around with, so I shelled out the $160.00 and that was that.  But, even though I had to shell out the money, the good news was I had it to shell out (and I’m not counting this as an expense against your donations, but maybe in the future we’ll have to consider budgeting for it).

However, no wonder why I’ve heard that some missionaries don’t take the Malaria medicine. Imagine if you had to shell out $2,000 to $3000 per year for it, and there are known side effects.

The other sad thing, is that we will likely see people during our trip who have malaria. No wonder, because the cost of the medicine would be astronomical over a life time. My medicine cost about 10% of the annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in Kenya and Tanzania!