Published 28 July 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1026
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1026

Letters

Imported malaria

Imported malaria is falling in Netherlands and Europe

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The increase in falciparum malaria in the UK reported by Smith et al1 does not correspond with our own observations on imported malaria in the Netherlands during recent years. We examined all consecutive malaria cases in the Harbour Hospital and Institute for Tropical Diseases in Rotterdam between 1 January 1999 and 1 January 2008. The number of falciparum cases fell from 40 patients in 2001 to 20 in 2007. Imported malaria with non-falciparum species also declined in this observational period. In the Netherlands as a whole, official malaria notifications fell from 569 cases in 2000 to 210 cases in 2007.2 3 Further, the World Health Organization’s data on imported malaria in most European countries show that reported falciparum malaria cases have declined over the past years.4

As in the UK, travellers to Ghana and Nigeria account for about half of all imported falciparum cases in the Netherlands, suggesting considerable overlap in . . . [Full text of this article]

Perry J van Genderen, consultant, internal medicine and tropical diseases1, Dennis A Hesselink, resident, internal medicine2, Jacob M Bezemer, medical student1

1 Harbour Hospital, Haringvliet 2, 3011TD Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2 Department of Internal Medicine, Erasmus Medical Centre, PO Box 2040, 3000 CA Rotterdam

p.van.genderen@havenziekenhuis.nl


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Imported malaria and high risk groups: observational study using UK surveillance data 1987-2006
Adrian D Smith, David J Bradley, Valerie Smith, Marie Blaze, Ron H Behrens, Peter L Chiodini, and Christopher J M Whitty
BMJ 2008 337: a120. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ