Malaria alert at Frankfurt airport, Germany. An employee of the Fraport company, which manages the airport, died after being infected and five other employees were infected. According to Fraport, the infection started from mosquitoes present on board an airplane. Protocols to protect public health have been activated.
Malaria alert at Frankfurt airport
The cases were confirmed by the Robert Koch Institute, the German federal body responsible for the control and prevention of infectious and chronic diseases, explaining that checks and safety measures have been increased at the airport. The infections are attributable to mosquitoes “imported” by plane. Transported in the hold or in baggage from a risk area, they would then have stung and infected the workers at the airport. Person-to-person contagion is excluded.
According to the Robert Koch Institute, the so-called “airport malaria”, such as the one recorded in Frankfurt, is a very rare form of infection outside the so-called endemic areas and involves mosquitoes being transported to other continents via cargo or passenger planes.
A Mitarbeiter des Frankfurter Flughafens ist nach einer Malaria-Infektion managerben. Insgesamt haben sich sechs Beschäftigte mit der Krankheit angesteckt, ausgelöst durch eine eingeschleppte Mücke.https://t.co/voRlKGGCZS
— airliners.de (@airliners_de) August 26, 2026
Malaria
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a protozoan parasite of the Plasmodium genus, which is transmitted to humans through the bite of mosquitoes of the Anopheles genus. It is a disease present mainly in tropical countries. The incubation period varies in most cases from one to four weeks. It is preventable and treatable.
The infection is not spread from person to person. Occasionally, transmission can occur by blood transfusion, organ transplant, needle sharing, or from mother to fetus.
In Italy it has disappeared since the 1950s and the cases of disease that occur every year in our country are mainly linked to people who have stayed in countries affected by malaria. Due to the large number of imported cases in Europe, malaria is primarily a “travel medicine” problem.