Airport malaria in Germany remains infrequent

Eight people are known to have contracted malaria in the vicinity of Frankfurt Airport in central Germany since July; three of them have died . Those affected are mostly employees of the airport operator Fraport.

The Frankfurt Public Health Department believes the outbreak is due to "airport malaria," which occurs when a female Anopheles mosquito carrying the malaria parasite travels by aircraft to a country where the disease is not common from one where it is , bites a person and infects their red blood cells.

"We are dealing with a very rare occurrence, not a new frequent disease in Germany," said Achim Hörauf, the director of the Institute for Medical Microbiology, Immunology and Parasitology at Bonn's University Hospital (UKB), in a press release.

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The last documented case of airport malaria in Germany before the current ones was in 2023, according to the Epidemiologisches Bulletin of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), an online journal that regularly provides information on infectious diseases and public health.

Normally, those with the disease in Germany were infected elsewhere and brought it back during a long-haul trip.

But a mosquito can make its way to Germany as a "stowaway" if it was trapped in a suitcase or in clothing. Hörauf said that under certain circumstances, it might be able to survive in warmer areas of an airport.

According to a UKB press release, the cases in Frankfurt involve malaria tropica , which is considered to be the most dangerous and potentially life-threatening form of malaria.