Malaria

Overview

Malaria is a disease in RimWorld that can be contracted by colonists in any biome, but it's easier to contract in the jungle. General symptoms include impaired consciousness, blood filtration - and eventually pain, vomiting, and impaired manipulation. Advanced symptoms include frequent vomiting along with a loss of consciousness, and death.

As there's no reliable way to calculate the time to develop immunity due to Malaria's nature, the figures are calculated assuming 94.7% blood filtration (the 'average' blood filtration throughout all stages of the disease), giving the closest possible to a perfectly accurate result

If left untreated, Malaria can kill the affected person in 2.701 days from discovery.
Good treatment can slow the disease to the point where it starts to regress. Treatment above 68.5% can halt and reverse the symptoms of the disease.

It takes around 3.819 days to develop immunity to Malaria; assuming the affected colonist is rested in an ordinary bed for the whole time, has nothing else affecting blood filtration, is well-fed, and under the age of 40.

Penoxycyline prevents colonists from catching the disease, but does nothing to stop a malaria infection already in progress.

Stages

Minor (Hidden) - Severity: 0 - 0.62

No effects on the affected colonist
Buildup to the 63% head start that Malaria has.

Minor - Severity: 0.63 - 0.77

-10% Blood Filtration
-5% Consciousness

Major - Severity: 0.78 - 0.9

Vomiting every 1.5 days (36 hours) on average.
+30% Pain
-20% Blood Filtration
-12% Consciousness
-8% Manipulation

Extreme - Severity: 0.91 - 0.99

Vomiting every 0.75 days (18 hours) on average.
Loss of Consciousness
+30% Pain
-22% Blood Filtration
-10% Manipulation

Extreme - Severity: 1

Death

Progression

When not immune, severity increases by 0.137 per day.
When immune, severity decreases by 0.27 per day.
Immunity increases by 0.12 per day when sick.
Treatment slows progression by a maximum of 0.2 per day.
- This means the disease will regress at 0.063 per day, enough to cause it to briefly vanish from sight if well-treated, and subsequently re-appear after the treatment wears off.
- This disease regression rate is considered bugged and may be reverted in later versions. Despite this being mentioned in Alpha 17, no chances have been made in Beta 18.

Overcoming Malaria

It's especially important that affected colonists are rested while they fight off Malaria due to its effect on Blood Filtration, and that you have plenty of medicine and a skilled doctor in hand. As with any other disease, you'll also want to make sure that the patient is well fed, and that they're promptly treated.

Treating Normal People (<40 Years Old)

You will need at least 36% average treatment quality in order to sufficiently slow down Malaria's progress to the point where it doesn't kill the patient.

The following combinations of doctoring skill and medicine are capable of achieving 36% treatment quality (assuming a perfectly healthy, unmodified doctor, the patient is rested and well-fed at all times, and treatment is administered immediately) - you'll generally want to aim above these thresholds for safety though; these combinations are just the bare minimum required, and aren't guaranteed to work out:

Level 1 Medicine skill and Glitterworld medicine
Level 4 Medicine skill and ordinary Medicine
Level 7 Medicine skill and Herbal medicine

Treating the Elderly (80+ Years Old)

As standard, you'll need to be more generous with doctors and medicine to ensure that old colonists survive. You will need at least 65% average treatment quality in order for the affected individual to have a chance of surviving. Again, this is a bare minimum and you should generally look towards more potent combinations than the following in order for guaranteed survival:

Level 3 Medicine skill and Glitterworld medicine
Level 8 Medicine skill and ordinary Medicine
Level 15 Medicine skill and Herbal medicine

Disease

Deadly diseases: Flu • Infection • Lung rot • Malaria • Plague • Sleeping sickness •
Blood rot • Infant illness
Non-fatal diseases: Fibrous mechanites • Gut worms • Muscle parasites • Sensory mechanites • Paralytic abasia
Animal diseases: Scaria