Italy : malaria kills a little girl of 4 years

Jim Gathany/CDC

Published the 05.09.2017 at 18h01

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How Sofia Zago, as the Italian media have dubbed her, does she have malaria ? This is the question that animates the conversations of the doctors of the hospital Santa Chiara in Trento, north of Italy, and that worries health authorities.

The 4 year-old child died from a form of acute of the disease, that she would have contracted on the spot. Yet malaria has been eradicated from the Italian soil for more than 50 years, and the north of Italy was not the region most exposed. The ministry of Health has dispatched investigators to the scene, in order to shed light on this death as tragic as mysterious.

Contamination of aboriginal

The three possibilities are to be considered. The first would be that the girl is made in a country where malaria circulates. This is not the case. She spent the summer in the region of Venice, at a little over 100 km from Trento.

It would on the other hand could be bitten by a mosquito imported. It happens that the mosquito vectors of malaria make the trip in such a way unintended by plane or by boat, carried into the affairs of travellers, or of containers of goods from these same countries.

Finally, the last possibility : a mosquito is local, but the vector of the disease, was able to sting a person infected with malaria, and then the little girl, who would have thus contracted in turn.