A few days after landing at Frankfurt Airport, several people who had never left Germany developed a fever. None had travelled anywhere near a malaria zone – but the mosquitoes that infected them had.
That’s the theory behind a small but serious cluster of malaria cases now linked to the airport – three of them fatal. It is known as “airport malaria”: mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite arrive on aircraft – in luggage or cargo – from countries where malaria is common. They then escape at the airport and bite people nearby.
