Two German airport workers die of malaria after 'mosquito arrives on plane'

Want to know the real tragedy here? Those deaths could be prevented if the hospital had better software and procedures. Like some other people noticed, malaria is rare in Germany. Doctors would not think of this diagnosis until it's too late. But... Malaria can be detected by modern hematology automated analyzers. I'm talking about ordinary hematology analyzers, not the ones specialized for malaria. All hospitals do at least one CBC+DIFF for all patients. If anyone cares to look at the warning flags and scattergrams [1], they could have seen that something's wrong, do a blood smear and confirm malaria in 30 minutes. It is a bit difficult, to be honest. Only a lab doc/tech would know how to interpret a scattergram, and some of the flags are extremely unreliable (not iRBC), but that doesn't mean they can be simply ignored. Unfortunately, in most labs, doctors who check and validate results, do that from the lab software app, not directly from the analyzer, and - devs, take notes! - most hospital/laboratory software I saw (and I saw many) ignore all flags and graphics send by the analyzers. They just take the numbers and that's it. When doctors look at a report, they don't see flags or scattergrams, just the numbers. Can't even tell if the numbers are reliable or not. And this is how malaria diagnosis, and lots of others, are missed. [1] https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/13/22/3397

I still remember they used disinsect the aircraft cabin, before you land in Indian airports with an aerosol spray https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer/spray https://www.epa.gov/mosquitocontrol/aircraft-disinsection

Kinda wild. I spent most of my childhood a couple hours drive from a malaria region and never heard of anyone getting sick locally that hadn’t travelled that way. So multiple people in Germany seems surprising.

They didn’t mention the strain. My understanding is that there are 5 strains. P. malariae is common and not particularly deadly while. When i visited Africa, all of the locals had had malaria multiple times. P. falciparum is extremely nasty and can kill quickly.

Two months passed between the two deaths. This already happened once in Frankfurt in 2023, fortunately without fatalities. https://www.n-tv.de/panorama/Zwei-Tote-durch-Flughafen-Malar...