How could two people die from it in Germany with modern medicine? Is malaria randomly fatal despite treatment, or did they not understand what the infection was or not seek treatment or something?

▲

Tangurena2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Globally in 2024, there were an estimated 282 million malaria cases and 610,000 malaria deaths in 80 countries

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria

One question that gets asked is "have you traveled to another country?" When the answer is "no", then doctors no longer consider diseases that exist in other countries. So that is why they did not understand the parasitic infection until it was too late.

Some of the early symptoms resemble a bad cold.

The parasite that causes malaria (literally "bad air") can only survive in certain species of mosquitos. Those skeeters don't live in Germany. They used to live in the state I live in, but they were exterminated back in the 1950s & 1960s (thanks DDT!). And people from West Africa were naturally/genetically resistant, which was why slaves from that region were preferred over every other race in the southern US where malaria existed until the 1950s & 1960s. If you have 0 copies of the gene then you usually die (of malaria) before puberty. If you have 2 copies of the gene, then you die from sickle cell anemia (usually by your teen years). If you have 1 copy of that gene (another commenter used the term "heterozygote") then the parasite can't live in some of your red blood cells, so you survive to have children.

Germany never had it, and reported being malaria free in 1964. America, in 1970.

https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/eliminati...

▲

kevin_thibedeau 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Malaria covered the entire eastern US (creeping into parts of Canada) and most of Europe in the 19th century.

▲

stephenhuey an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Some good info, but some kind of simplistic. I lived in Nigeria for the second half of my childhood in the 80s and 90s and got malaria several times. People come down with it all the time, and typically treat it, and you can recover without treatment also. Most people die from sickle cell anemia when young, but I know multiple outliers who have lived to middle age, and they might live longer yet.

It's easy to test for malaria, if you actually think to test for malaria. In the 90s, we used to hear wild stories from people we knew who would come down with malaria shortly after returning to the USA and doctors and nurses would freak out not knowing what to do about it, and the medication would be expensive to obtain, so the conventional wisdom was also to remember to take a few pills with you on the plane back to the USA!

It's sad but unsurprising that no one was able to treat these German workers in time. When I was a child, there was already talk of strains developing resistance, and this has gotten worse in the 21st century, and the airport workers caught the most deadly strain:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/27/malaria-outbre...

	▲	codethief 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> It's sad but unsurprising that no one was able to treat these German workers in time. Literally every pharmacy over here sells treatment against malaria – many have it in stock and even if they don't, they'll be able to get it for you within a few hours. Every major city (certainly every city with an airport where you could catch airport malaria) has a hospital with a department specifically for infectious and tropical diseases, where they'll happily take care of you. GPs ask you if you've been to the equator lately if you go see them with high fever. I'm not sure how a country where malaria is not common at all would be able to do any better? Also, as I mentioned in another comment, airport staff are instructed to watch out for malaria symptoms precisely because airport malaria is a thing. Something definitely went wrong here but from afar it surely doesn't look like a healthcare failure to me. Maybe the deceased stayed home, thinking they had caught a cold and would be able to sit it out?

▲

spankibalt 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From the article:

"It [the Robert Koch Institute] said laboratory tests to determine the source of the infections were not expected to be available for several weeks. [...] The [Robert Koch] institute said malaria in Germany almost exclusively affects long-haul travellers who were infected in malaria-endemic areas, and that malaria transmitted within a German airport is rare. 'The lack of a travel history can lead to a delayed diagnosis. A delayed diagnosis increases the risk of a severe course of the diseases,' the institute said in its epidemiological bulletin."

	▲	codethief 8 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> laboratory tests to determine the source of the infections were not expected to be available for several weeks Note that this about DNA tests & analysis to determine the origin of the malaria/the mosquitos, not about simple tests for the disease.

▲

testing22321 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Cerebral malaria is fatal with no treatment in many cases. For kids and elderly it’s fatal even with.

Likely this happened because they have no expertise and didn’t know what to do.

Imagine if you showed up in a hospital in the us with a sting from some super intense scorpion that only exists is some obscure part of the world. They’ll try to help, but likely can’t do much.

▲

vezycash 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Nigerian here, cerebral malaria is very curable. It's very common and people survive.

	▲	testing22321 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry I wasn’t more clear. I meant with no treatment it is often fatal. Almost certainly do for kids and elderly with no treatment.