Indigenous malaria in a suburb of Ghent, Belgium

Abstract

We report here details of a patient with Plasmodium falciparum malaria which was acquired in the vicinity of Ghent (Evergem) in July 1997. Indigenous malaria disappeared from Belgium in 1938. Due to an increase in international travel, the influx of migrant labor and the changing environmental conditions, there has been an upsurge of imported malaria. Airport- and port-malaria is acquired through the bite of a tropical anophelline mosquito by people whose geographical history excludes exposure to this vector in its natural habitat. As far as we know, only two cases of port-malaria have been reported: in Marseille. We describe here another possible case of port-malaria due to infection with P. falciparum in a 42-year-old woman with an underlying non-Hodgkin lymphoma.