Local malaria transmission emerges in south of France
On June 30, 2006, a French woman from Marseille, with no history of travel outside Europe, came down with falciparum malaria. The source of the anopheles mosquitoes may have been a pool of standing water in her cellar and another puddle 20 meters outside her building, but investigators were unable to find any larvae. The mosquitoes may have picked up the parasite from her neighbors, some of whom were from Comoros, where malaria is endemic.
It appears the malarious Marseille mosquitoes may have infected a tourist, who came down with falciparum malaria upon his return home to Minneapolis.
For more, see Barbara Doudier et al, “Possible autochthonous malaria from Marseille to Minneapolis,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, August 2007.
In October 2007, when I was in Paris, I found that people there indeed considered that malaria was back in the country. The French government, unlike the U.S. government, is unlikely to blitz the south of France with insecticides.
