A few days after landing at Frankfurt Airport, several people who had never left Germany developed a fever. None had travelled anywhere near a malaria zone – but the mosquitoes that infected them had.

That’s the theory behind a small but serious cluster of malaria cases now linked to the airport – three of them fatal. It is known as “airport malaria”: mosquitoes carrying the malaria parasite arrive on aircraft – in luggage or cargo – from countries where malaria is common. They then escape at the airport and bite people nearby.

Airport malaria is extremely rare and the risk to the wider public is still very low. But the cases point to a real problem anywhere malaria isn’t normally seen: doctors have to be extra vigilant to identify it. And even once they do, diagnosing and treating it rapidly isn’t always straightforward.

Malaria is caused by parasites that pass into the body when an infected Anopheles mosquito bites someone. Several species of Plasmodium parasite can infect humans, but Plasmodium falciparum is the most dangerous. It multiplies rapidly in........

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