Navy looks for answers after Seebee dies from malaria (caught in Africa)

Navy looks for answers after Seebee dies from malaria
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Monday, April 19, 2010

HEIDELBERG, Germany — By the time he got to Landstuhl, Joshua Dae Ho Carrell was more dead than alive.

The Seabee was unconscious, with a tube stuck down his throat to help him breathe. His kidneys, liver and lungs were failing, and he was in shock, with his blood pressure falling.

Carrell, 23, was suffering from severe falciparum malaria, an infection of red blood cells acquired from mosquito bites that had sent parasites coursing through his bloodstream, sticking to capillaries, obstructing blood flow, damaging organs and, worst of all, causing his brain to swell.

It was three days before last Christmas. Carrell had been infected during a deployment to Liberia. He and 24 other Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 3 were in the fourth month of a goodwill mission to renovate a hospital.

At Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, with the best care military medicine could provide, Carrell’s vital signs improved at first. But the day after Christmas, the petty officer third class from Port Angeles, Wash., was declared brain dead. His devastated mother couldn’t watch when they took him off the respirator. A friend stayed and recorded the time of his final heartbeat: exactly 10:28 a.m.