Monday, August 09, 2010

Leptospirosis vs Kanching Waterfalls

I was supposed to go to Kanching Rainforest Waterfall last weekend with my girlfriends. But an issue was brought up.

The issue of Leptosprosis.


I went "Lep-to-what?" (Yes, I am a future pharmacist, yet I did not know what Leptospirosis was. Disappointing I know = ='')

Anyways, after a few clicks on the internet I found out that Leptospirosis is basically a bacterial infection transmitted by animals, and in Malaysia, rats have somehow been blamed as the main perpetrator for the disease, thus giving it the nickname as rat urine's disease.

This was an issue because in the past few weeks, news reports of deaths due to Leptosprosis have been reported in papers.

".....Death of eight people believed to be due to melioidosis and leptospirosis infections after taking part in a search operation for a man who was drowned in Lubuk Yu, Maran, Pahang.

Another death was recorded due to bacterial infection involving a man who had gone for picnic at Lata Bayu, Baling, Kedah." [Bernama]

Soooo, my friend said that we shouldn't go to any waterfalls to avoid getting this disease. Meh.

But now after I did more reading on the disease, I conclude that my vote still goes to Kanching Waterfalls!!
Because for starters, Leptospirosis is a rare disease and despite the possibility of it being misdiagnosed, it is a curable disease just like Malaria (in fact the antibiotics used to treat both diseases are similar. There's also an incubation period for Leptospirosis just like Malaria.)

For those who are interested in reading more about Leptospirosis, just Wiki it, or if you think wikipedia is unreliable, there's always Medicine.net :P

See! That's what I missed out last weekend :S
I'm so gonna plan a next trip there soon :D

4 comments:

CYeong said...

where is kanching??

-JayLeo™- said...

i was supposed to go for some waterfall trip too but ended up calling it off because of Leptospirosis.

WenYi said...

cy: kanching is somewhere in KL. i don't really know where it is but i'll get my dad's gps :P

jayleo: yea, but actually it's not as dangerous as it sounds. As long as you don't have open cuts you'll probably won't get the disease. haha..

-JayLeo™- said...

i think i have cuts around me. that's why. hahaha

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