A day later Fourie was in an induced coma at the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital after being diagnosed with cerebral malaria.
She had become the latest casualty of a malaria epidemic sweeping South Africa.
By Thursday Fourie’s condition, according to a Facebook page set up to raise funds for her, had improved, with her still in ICU but no longer sedated.
The 20-year-old was believed to have contracted malaria in her home town, Musina in Limpopo - a province which has seen a marked increase in the number of cases over the past year.
As South Africans head home from their holiday destinations, health professionals fear they may return with malaria, and not realise they are ill.
“Cases have increased enormously, including in some of the historical areas, where the disease has not been seen in more recent years,” said Professor Lucille Blumberg, deputy director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD).
“We’re looking at three times the usual figure.”
There was a rise in the number of deaths from malaria last year.
“The message for returning travellers is to be aware of the symptoms. If they think it is just a babalaas or jet lag and they get severe malaria, some of them will die,” warned Blumberg.
Malaria symptoms included body aches, pains, fever and headaches.
Another concern, according to Blumberg, was that doctors often failed to diagnose malaria timeously.
Perplexing was the fact that infected mosquitoes may arrive from malaria areas by car, truck or taxi and transmit the disease locally, which, because it is unexpected, often has very delayed diagnosis and a high mortality.
What’s driving this epidemic is the increased rainfall, delays in mosquito control insecticide spraying and the usual movement of people during the festive season.
“Malaria is easy to diagnose, easy to treat, responds very well to treatment but it is not time-forgiving,” Blumberg said.
Health officials in malaria areas have upped their spraying programmes to combat the epidemic.
But while southern Africa battles its own malaria epidemic, international scientists announced a major breakthrough in the fight against the disease on Thursday.
They claimed that they have discovered just how the world’s most widespread malaria parasite infects humans. They found that the malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax hijacks the human transferrin receptor protein, responsible for delivering iron to the body’s red blood cells.
The researchers were also able to develop antibodies that prevented the parasite from latching on to the transferrin receptor protein.
“P. vivax inflicts a huge burden on global health. It is the most common malaria parasite in countries outside of Africa, with more than 16 million clinical cases recorded each year,” said associate professor Wai-Hong Tham of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Australia.
The parasite was not common in South Africa, but local scientists believe the study is an important breakthrough in the fight against malaria even here.
“The methodology used in this study can potentially be replicated to elucidate the invasion pathways of the other less prevalent human malaria species, such as P. malariae and P. ovale, allowing for the development of vaccines to block parasite entry into the parasite,” explains Dr Jaishree Raman, a medical scientist at the NICD.