by David Gernantan 80-year-old tourist, former judge in the state of Oregon, United States, died of malaria at the Fernández Hospital of the City of Buenos Aires.
The man was urgently admitted to the Buenos Aires guard and died a few minutes later. As confirmed to Clarion From the City Ministry of Health, the retired judge was treated at Fernández on January 7. He was returning from Ushuaia, but previously he passed through several countries, so There is no information yet on where he contracted the disease..
“It is not known where he caught it (malaria) because he was in different destinations, such as Istanbul, India, Ethiopia. He arrived at the guard and within half an hour he died.“, they detailed to this newspaper From Fernández.
The United States embassy and consulate are closely monitoring this death.
The patient arrived in a serious state of health, with high fever, severe anemia and hypoglycemia. He was intubated and died within an hour.
As a result of the in-depth study carried out at the Malbrán Institute, it is confirmed that the cause of death was malaria.
According to the National Ministry of Health, malaria, also known as malaria, “is a disease that can be deadly and is transmitted by the bite of the mosquito of the genus Anopheles.” This mosquito is present in our country in some regions of Salta, Jujuy and Misiones and in several countries in America, Asia and Africa.
Mainly, the symptoms are fever, chills, general malaise and headache. There are different treatment schemes depending on the type of parasite that caused the disease.
Prevention, if traveling to malaria circulation areas, is protect yourself with repellent and wear long sleeves and pants that cover up to the ankles, to avoid the bite of this mosquito.
The World Health Organization (WHO) certified in May 2019 that Argentina is a malaria-free country. There have been no indigenous cases since 2011. The last outbreak recorded in the country was in the province of Misiones in 2007.
Who was the American tourist who died from malaria?
David Gernant was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on November 4, 1943. After graduating from Western Michigan University, Gernant came to Harvard Law School. He served as an “openly gay” judge, as he noted, in the Portland District Court, Department 9. He has also been a active activist for the rights of the LGTBQ+ community in Oregon.
In his political career, as a Democrat, Gernant criticized specific HIV legislation in Michigan and advocated for its repeal.
