Frankfurt, 17 July 2026
Four employees at Frankfurt Airport have fallen ill with malaria, as the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) announced on Friday in Berlin.
According to the RKI, it must be assumed that the infections originated from an Anopheles mosquito imported by air. In such cases, medical professionals speak of so-called "airport malaria." The pathogen is not transmitted from person to person, but rather through the bite of an infected mosquito that reached Germany by air.
The case is particularly notable in that in Germany, malaria almost exclusively affects long-distance travelers who were infected abroad. Infection at a German airport, on the other hand, is "a rare event," the RKI further explained. Based on current findings, there is no elevated risk for travelers and the general population, since malaria is not transmitted from person to person.
Background: Airport Malaria in Europe
The most recent malaria case at Frankfurt Airport prior to this was recorded in 2023. The current outbreak thus joins a very limited series of incidents that have been documented in Europe over decades.
A study aiming to capture all cases of airport and baggage malaria from 1969 to 2024 in Europe identified a total of 145 cases, nine of them in Germany. The majority of these infections occurred near international hubs where flights from tropical regions land.