Since there was little medicine available to treat malaria, it was hard for a POW with malaria to keep an optimistic attitude. Malaria was one of the most common deadliest diseases suffered by POWs. The disease caused shakes that lasted from one to two hours. Then, a fever would set in as high as one hundred seven degrees accompanied by rapid breathing which would last three to four hours. The fever was followed by profuse sweating for about two to four more hours. After which, the cycle renewed itself.[1]  Other symptoms included severe headaches, hallucinations, loss of appetite and weakness. [2] If not properly treated, the disease could go dormant only to resurface later or progress to cerebral malaria where the patient got violent[3] and frothed at the mouth. If cerebral malaria developed, the victim was dead within three to four days. [4] Malaria was spread by mosquitoes which injected the parasite that caused the disease when the mosquito bit the victim. Prevention was the key to controlling the disease. Mosquito nets prevented the mosquito from getting to the POWs in the first place. [5]  However, very few POWs had the nets available to them. Ex-POW Aiden MacCarthy had enough foresight to keep his mosquito net from before the war. MacCarthy was also fortunate that the Japanese had not confiscated the net when he surrendered in Java. [6] The drug quinine was both a preventative measure as well as the cure for malaria. To treat malaria, the correct dose of quinine had to be administered everyday for six months.[7] The problem with that was the drug quinine was only available in limited amounts if at all to the POWs. Ex-POW Charles Jackson recalled that Major Mori, the notorious Japanese commandant at Cabanatuan, told POWs that there was no quinine. Yet, the Japanese guards here sold quinine to the thriving black market operating in the camp. [8] The Red Cross sent supplies of quinine in their weekly packages[9], however as noted previously, the POWs rarely received the Red Cross packages. In Borneo, after liberation, Allied troops found stockpiles of quinine and other drugs. Here both POWs and Japanese troops died of malaria because the commandant refused to distribute the stockpiles of quinine.[10]