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 91.35% 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.

It takes around 3.106 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.

Prevention

Penoxycyline prevents colonists from falling sick to the plague but does nothing to stop an infection already in progress.

Progression

When not immune, severity increases by 0.3702 per day.
When immune, severity decreases by 0.7297 per day.
Immunity increases by 0.3145 per day when sick.
Treatment slows progression by a maximum of 0.232 per day.

Stages

Minor - Severity: 0.0 - 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

Treatment

Normal people

You will need at least 7% average treatment quality in order to sufficiently slow down Malaria's progress to the point where it doesn't kill the patient.

Alternatively, resting in a hospital bed with vitals monitor connected allows colonists to survive without treatment; this is not generally recommended, however, as it is far slower than active treatment.

Extremely vulnerable

For those with a base immunity gain rate of 37% or less, there is no chance that they will be able to survive malaria normally, even with 100% treatment quality for all treatments and rest in a hospital bed with vitals monitor connected. This includes some people with kidney and liver damage, whether it is physical or chemical damage.

To save the colonist you can do the following:

Administer healer mech serum - instantly treats the disease
Administer luciferium - if pawn has 22% or more immunity gain speed remaining initially, this gives pawn a chance to survive
Perform an organ transplant for pawns with damage to their liver or kidneys. There are no direct artificial replacements for these organs, so you will have to acquire a "donor".
Install up to two immunoenhancers for 8% per enhancer installed. Note that these require a kidney to be present for them to be installed into, so a transplant might be required if they are missing. Damaged kidneys are sufficient however.
Place the patient in a cryptosleep casket until you have one of the above.

Version history

In an earlier version (Alpha 17?) sufficiently good treatment could cause malaria to regress. This combined with the fact that malaria had a hidden stage back then meant that the disease could be "cured" and subsequently reappear several times, until the pawn finally gains immunity.

Disease

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