Celebrity Baby HysteriaWatch: Jolie's Malaria Problem
Perhaps caught up in the excitement from yesterday's Baby Spears High Chair Incident, the web-enabled stalkerazzi at TMZ.com brainstormed other celebrity-offspring-in-potential-danger scenarios, and having rejected items on Moses Paltrow's possible ingestion of day-old bangers and mash and Violet Affleck's theoretical exposure to the radioactive fallout from her father's career, decided to go with a story on what disaster might befall Angelina Jolie's unborn baby in Africa:
TMZ contacted Passport Health for their take on pregnant women traveling to Namibia and giving birth there. Carol DeRosa, the Executive Director and head nurse, said, "I would not recommend it. No one would."
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is on record discouraging pregnant women from traveling to areas where malaria is prevalent, adding that malaria is a "major risk." Malaria causes high fevers, shaking chills, and rigors that can cause premature birth, miscarriage, and stillbirth.
Malaria is most prevalent in Namibia between November through June.
There are antimalarial pills that people can take to prevent the disease, but DeRosa from Passport Health tells TMZ that such precautions are not fool proof. In addition, DeRosa calls health care in Africa "overwhelmingly poor."
In their rush to imperil Jolie's baby with marsh fever, TMZ is overlooking another potential risk: that the scent of Jolie's afterbirth will turn her leonine sentries from stalwart protectors into newborn-gobbling predators. All lions within a square-mile radius of the couple's Namibian hideaway should immediately be destroyed to eliminate the possibility of this tragedy.