A worker at Frankfurt Airport in Germany has died from malaria in a rare outbreak. This outbreak is believed to have started due to infected mosquitoes that were brought into the country on a plane.
Five other airport workers have also caught the disease and are receiving treatment, according to reports.
Fraport, the airport operator, confirmed the death on Wednesday. A spokesperson said, “Sadly, we must confirm that one employee has died as a result of the infection.”
Frankfurt’s Public Health Department is looking into the outbreak. Officials want to find out how the workers got infected.
Reports indicate that the six infected workers are men who work in different sections of the airport. They all have different jobs and none of them are known to have traveled to any malaria-prone countries.
German health officials think the infections may have come from mosquitoes that arrived in Germany on a plane. Mosquito traps have now been set up at the airport. The captured mosquitoes are being tested to find out their species and where they came from.
This situation is referred to as “airport malaria.” It is a rare kind of transmission that happens when an infected mosquito is brought on a plane or in luggage and later bites people at or near an airport.
Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which handles public health and disease control, reported that the first four workers fell ill between 4 and 6 July.
The RKI noted that malaria cases in Germany usually involve people who got infected while traveling to areas where malaria is common. This makes transmission at a German airport quite unusual.
The last recorded case of airport malaria at Frankfurt Airport was in 2023, according to the RKI.
Frankfurt’s public health authorities have stated that the risk to the general public is very low. This is because malaria cannot spread directly from one person to another. It is only spread through bites from infected mosquitoes.
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