BRESCIA- Hospital authorities were investigating Wednesday the death of a girl, aged 4, from malaria with concerns that she could have caught it in hospital from other patients.

 Authorities fear that the disease may be contagious. Italian minister of health, Beatrice Lorenzin, made a statement saying: “from the first indications that showed that the child may have caught malaria in hospital in Trento, we have been treating it as a very serious case. Experts were immediately sent to look further into both the disease and its transmission”.

 The young girl, known as Sofia Z., had spent the summer in the resort of Bibione, in the Veneto region, and had been admitted to hospital in Portogruaro and then at Trento to be treated for childhood diabetes. From Trento she was taken in a coma to Brescia hospital, Saturday, where she died only 48 hours later.

 It is thought that Sofia could have caught the disease from two other patients in the hospital in Trento who were being treated for malaria there, having caught the disease in Africa, but who have now made a full recovery. Another suggestion is that she could have been infected by a mosquito that had been accidentally brought into Italy in a suitcase, according to Il Messaggero.

 As far as is know, Sofia had never been to a malaria-infected country and the species of mosquito that transmits the disease is not thought to be present in Italy.

 The four-year-old suffered from a particularly severe strain of the disease, cerebral malaria which in worst cases, kills the sufferer within 24 hours. The disease is most prevalent in Subsaharan Africa, Asia and Central and South America.

Paolo Bordon, director general of Apss (the company in charge of health services in the Trento region), said that the “diabetes had nothing to do with the malaria” and that although there were two other patients in the hospital being treated for malaria, the disease cannot be passed on from person to person.

 It is suspected that the child was infected via a mosquito, brought into the country by mistake. However, if the case is confirmed to have been transmitted by a local mosquito with the disease, it would be the first in the area for 20 years. Investigations are ongoing.

ES