Mattie thought she didn't need malaria pills... but within a week of a trip to Africa she was dead

By LUCY ELKINS FOR MAILONLINE
Updated: 03:56 EDT, 1 June 2010

Mattie Cooper was known affectionately by her family as ‘the amazon.’

Beautiful and clever, she was also physically strong and full of life. She was studying philosophy at Cardiff University and everyone who knew her felt sure a glittering future beckoned.

Yet she never got to fulfil that promise. In 2005, after a trip to see her father in Uganda, Mattie became ill with what everyone, including her GP, thought was flu.

Tragic consequences: Mattie Cooper's life was cut short needlessly when she died from malaria

In fact, she had malaria and within a week she was dead - killed by a single mosquito bite.

Mattie was not a naive traveller unaware of the risks of malaria. She used insecticide repellent, malaria nets and wore clothing to protect her arms and legs from bites.

However, crucially she did not take anti-malaria tablets. Many people don’t. they think the risk to them is minimal and that anyway malaria is not a serious illness.

Indeed, surveys at airports have found that 40 per cent of people travelling abroad do not take advice about any health precautions - and that applies even to those going to tropical destinations.

Yet as Mattie’s family now know, malaria can kill. Mattie,19, knew the risks but thought she didn’t need anti-malaria drugs.

She had spent four years at school in Kenya and thought she had become immune to the illness. So, on subsequent holidays to Africa to visit her father, a British former journalist who ran a hotel, she did not bother to take anti-malaria pills with her. 

Mattie was bitten by a mosquito in Uganda and hadn't taken any anti-malarials. She was dead within a week

Unfortunately, only those who survive a bout of the illness become immune to it — and even then, they are only partially protected.

To maintain that immunity they must be exposed to the disease constantly. As Mattie spent most of her time in Cardiff or at home with her mother in North Devon, her occasional two-week holidays in africa were not enough to protect her.

‘Mattie did die in vain — her death was utterly preventable,’ says her mother ros Wehner, 46.

‘Had she just taken malaria tablets she would be alive now, but she made no special health provisions for going to Uganda. ‘Looking back now it seems so silly, but it’s easy to be wise after the event.

‘She wasn’t blasé about malaria. She thought - as did I - that she was immune to it. What none of us realised was that she was every bit as vulnerable as a tiny baby.’

Currently, 2,000 Britons a year contract malaria during their travels and the number is rising. Last year the Health protection agency reported a 9 per cent increase on the previous year.

One reason for the rise is the increasing popularity of malaria hotspots such as South east Asia, India and Africa as holiday destinations. 

The more commonplace long-haul travel becomes, the more gung-ho people seem to become about the health risks they may encounter.

‘There has been a constant trickle of cases of malaria from places like the Gambia because it’s easy to get to, people stay in a nice hotel, book a last-minute deal and don’t think about the malaria risk,’ says Dr Colin Sutherland, a parasite expert from the London School of Hygiene and tropical Medicine.

‘However, if they had ever seen someone with malaria they would take the risk far more seriously - it is a deeply unpleasant disease.’ 

University student Mattie Cooper, pictured on the right, was studying philosophy at University when she went on holiday to Uganda

Malaria is caused by a parasite transmitted by mosquitoes. When a mosquito bites a human and starts to feed on the blood, spores of the parasite are transmitted into that person.

These travel in the blood to the liver, where they develop and multiply. they are then released in waves into the bloodstream.

The parasites attach themselves to red blood cells and make them burst, which deprives the body of oxygen and is why one of the first symptoms is exhaustion.

‘As one red blood cell bursts, it releases toxins into the blood which alerts the immune system to the presence of an invader,’ says Dr Sutherland. ‘Like flu, it is the body’s response to the invading parasites - a high temperature, body aches and diarrhoea - which cause the majority of symptoms.

The fever may kill off some of the parasites for a while but then they will multiply again and come back, which is why often — although not always — the symptoms of the illness come in waves getting better and then worsening again every three days.’

There are five different various forms of the condition — Falciparum malaria, which Mattie had, is the most serious.

This is because the parasites multiply quicker, and when they attach themselves to the red blood cells they tend to stick together and block off blood vessels, especially those in the brain when the disease is called cerebral malaria.

‘Once the blood vessels in the brain are affected, death can occur in as little as a day,’ says professor Larry Goodyer, a member of the Health Protection Agency’s Malaria Advisory Group and head of the Leicester School of Pharmacology at De Montfort University.

Other forms of malaria such as Vivax usually prove fatal only in young children — even without treatment — but will make someone feel very ill.

It also tends to recur because spores of this type of malaria often remain dormant in the liver and come to life when a person becomes run down or ill.

When Mattie set out for Uganda in December 2004 she was bouncing with excitement, and good health.

‘I used to call her my Amazon as she was so strong, she was never ill,’ says Ros, who has another daughter Imogen, 15, and two grown-up step-sons with her husband John, 61, a retired businessman.

'The worst thing she picked up in Uganda before this was some spider bites, just little itchy bumps, when she once went camping over there.

‘On this trip she was going to be in Uganda for Christmas and her birthday on New Year’s Eve. And although I was going to really miss her I knew she wanted to go and would have a lovely time, as she had a lot of school friends over there and, of course, she could see her father.

‘He and I split up some time ago but had always remained good friends and Mattie went to see him and stay with him in his hotel on Lake Victoria regularly.’

Mattie returned to the UK during the second week of January in 2005. Her mother thought she seemed a bit tired, but put that down to having had a long flight home.

In fact, the malaria was starting to attack her. After someone has been infected, it takes a minimum of a week and up to a year or, on occasions, even more before they show the first symptoms of the disease.

‘Within two days of her return, Mattie was clearly unwell. She was shivery and had a headache but she thought it was nothing more than flu,’ says Ros. ‘I offered to take her to the doctor — I kick myself now for not insisting that I do it — but she was adamant she was fine.

‘I did wonder if it might be malaria and looked up her symptoms in a family health book, but it talked about a fever which came in three-day cycles, which wasn’t what Mattie had at all. She would be better in the morning and got shivery in the afternoon — which is a bit like flu.

‘Mattie didn’t mention malaria — although I don’t why — but I suspect now that she was hoping it wasn’t and was in denial.

'I really wanted her stay and recuperate but she was keen to get back to university and catch up with her friends and her work, so after six days she went. day and was well enough to get the train and called me later to say she felt much better.’

Malaria is caused by a parasite that is transmitted by mosquitoes

Her friends later told Ros that Mattie had not wanted to worry her mother, but by the weekend she was so ill with shivers and diarrhoea that they called NHS Direct.

She was referred to an out-of-hours doctor who when he found out she had been to Africa advised that she see her GP in the morning. Mattie went to the GP but for some reason she did not tell him she had been travelling and he diagnosed flu.

He told her to come back in five days if she was not better.

She became more feverish and weak. Four days later her friend found her dead in bed.

‘The last time I spoke to Mattie is a blur — I think it was the Monday — but she assured me she was feeling better,’ says Ros ‘A couple of days later a policeman arrived at our door. I was at home with Imogen and we both instantly knew it was Mattie.

‘Imogen ran upstairs crying before he had said anything. When he said she was dead I felt as if I had been hit physically, the pain was awful.

‘She had always been so full of life it seemed impossible that she could have gone.’ Four days later a postmortem confirmed malaria had killed Mattie.

‘There were so many points at which this could have been picked up, but it wasn’t,’ says Ros. ‘Ironically, if her symptoms had come on in Africa people would have automatically assumed it was malaria and got her treatment, but here no one thinks of it.’

The treatment for someone with Mattie’s form of malaria is intravenous quinine or another anti malaria drug, artemisinin. Both are anti-malarial medications which are given in much bigger doses than they would be if used as a preventative measure.

‘The expert at the inquest said that while Mattie was still able to talk she could have been saved,’ says Ros, who is now working for the Malaria Awareness Campaign.

‘She wasn’t and life just limped on. For the f irst few years afterwards, it was all I could do to try to keep myself together and get Imogen to school. It was horrid and it’s only recently that I have managed to do much at all. ‘However, if there is one thing I want to achieve it is to make people aware of the risks of malaria.

‘As we have learned, mosquitoes aren’t selective, they don’t avoid biting you just because you’re from the West, or because you’ve just finished your A-levels. ‘It just takes one bite and a wonderful life can be extinguished, just like that.’