KBR's Foreign Contractors at Guantanamo Spared Controversial Anti-Malarial Drug Given to Detainees

[dipsydoodle]

The Defense Department has claimed it took the unprecedented step of forcing all "war on terror" detainees sent to Guantanamo in 2002 to take a high dosage of a controversial anti-malarial drug known to have severe side effects because the government was concerned the disease could be reintroduced into Cuba by detainees arriving from malaria-endemic countries Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But hundreds of contractors who were hired by Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services firm formerly headed by Dick Cheney, from malaria-endemic countries such as the Philippines and India and tasked with building Guantanamo's Camp Delta facility in early 2002 did not receive the same type of medical treatment, calling into question the Pentagon's rationale of mass presumptive treatment of detainees with the drug mefloquine, a Truthout investigation has found.

Numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and public health experts have linked mefloquine, also known by its brand name, Lariam, with severe side effects, including vertigo, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, anxiety, panic attacks, confusion, hallucinations, bizarre dreams, sores and homicidal and suicidal thoughts.

Indeed, a 2002 study reported that upwards of 80 to over 90 percent of all healthy volunteers administered treatment doses of mefloquine suffered either vertigo or nausea. According to the study by Austrian researchers, "Participants suffering from severe (grade 3) vertigo (73 percent) required bed rest and specific medication for 1 to 4 days."

http://www.truth-out.org/contractors-treatment-undercuts-pentagon-rationale-giving-guantanamo-detainees-anti-malarial-drug681