Malaria

Malaria is a parasitic disease carried by Anopheles mosquitoes, the only carriers of human Malaria. Plasmodium falciparum causes its deadliest form and can kill within days. Doctors usually suspect Malaria only after a patient mentions travel to an endemic country, so cases caught at home are easily missed.

That blind SPOT showed at Frankfurt. At Frankfurt, eight people WHO had never been to a Malaria country caught falciparum malaria at or near the airport, and three died, according to ECDC's report of 18 September 2026. Six worked at the airport; two lived in separate homes within 5 km. Europe's previous airport clusters reached six cases, and only 105 airport Malaria cases were recorded in Europe from 1969 to 2022, according to a 2024 review. ECDC judges infected mosquitoes arriving on aircraft the likely cause and says local Anopheles involvement cannot be excluded; Frankfurt's traps had found none by 29 September.

Europe's own mosquitoes can still pass on the disease. In 1997 a woman in Grosseto, Tuscany, caught vivax Malaria with no travel history, and Greece recorded locally caught vivax Malaria in Laconia from 2009 to 2012 until mosquito control and case-finding ended the chain.