Plasmodium falciparum

Plasmodium falciparum is the most dangerous of the five Malaria parasites that infect humans and causes most Malaria deaths, according to WHO. It spreads through the bite of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes, not from person to person. It can cause severe disease, including cerebral Malaria and severe anaemia, and can kill within days. WHO lists artemisinin-based combination therapies as the standard treatment.

In 2026 it has turned up where doctors do not expect it. ECDC reported on 18 September that eight people with no travel history caught it at or near Frankfurt Airport: six airport workers who fell ill from early July, and two residents of separate households within 5 km who fell ill in early September. Three died. Europe logged 105 airport Malaria cases from 1969 to 2022, in clusters never larger than six, according to a 2024 review. ECDC thinks infected mosquitoes arriving on aircraft are the likely cause, while Frankfurt has trapped no Anopheles nearby; parasite genotyping is due at the end of October.

On Mayotte, the French Indian Ocean island, P. falciparum caused every one of the 244 confirmed Malaria cases that Santé publique France logged to 21 June 2026, the island's highest count since 2010. Twenty-five were caught locally; most of the rest came from the Comoros. In late April and May, cases ran at 25 a week, about four times the rate a year earlier.