A dangerous complication of malaria turns urine dark with blood – but only affects some young patients in rural areas and not others. Puzzled experts are trying to find out why. By the age of six, Babirye Zainab had already contracted malaria several times. Her grandmother did not see it as a big problem though. “I would treat her with antimalarials and she would be all right,” she says.
But then she developed a fever and started to have convulsions. Her urine was the colour of tea, and her grandmother, who shares the same name, was worried enough to take her on a motorbike to the local health centre.
“We were discharged. A month later, she had another episode. Since then, she has experienced quite a number of episodes of passing tea-coloured urine,” she says.
Zainab is part of a medical riddle affecting rural Uganda.