ROME, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- A four-year old girl has died from cerebral malaria in northern Italy, Italian authorities said on Tuesday.
The victim had been living in the northeast Trentino region, an area free of the disease, and she had not traveled abroad to areas where malaria is endemic.
She had first undergone treatment for child diabetes in the regional capital of Trento, and was then rushed to hospital in Brescia with high fever on Saturday, the regional health agency (APSS) said in a statement.
Two children were under therapy for malaria at the same health facility on the same days, and there were early speculations this could have played a role in the case.
However, health authorities have dismissed the hypothesis so far as the two young patients were never near or in contact with the victim, APSS director general Paolo Bordon told local media.
"The little girl who has died, and the two children affected by malaria, were hosted in different rooms, and received separate treatments. There were also no blood transfusions," Bordon told La Repubblica newspaper.
"Malaria does not spread from one person to another, and no other patients have showed symptoms of malaria since then," he added.
The two children with malaria contracted the disease during a trip to Burkina Faso, and have since recovered, the official also said.
The girl was in a coma when she arrived at Brescia. There, she received an anti-malaria treatment, but she died from cerebral damage caused by the disease, the chief of the local hospital told Ansa news agency.
Cases of malaria have drastically dropped in Italy since the late 1930s, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the country officially free of the disease by 1970.
The recent case disquieted experts. "It is an extremely rare and cryptic case," said the director of research in epidemiology at the National Institute of Health (ISS), according to Adnkronos news agency reports.
"I say cryptic, because this form of malaria is spread by a type of mosquito that is missing in Italy. Therefore, the mode of transmission remains unclear, and we are going to keep investigating," Giovanni Rezza explained.
The epidemiologist added that the risk of further cases would be "very low, if not zero."
Between 2000 and 2008, Italy registered 6,377 cases of malaria, of which 27.5 percent were Italians and 72.5 percent foreign citizens, according to the ISS available data. Only nine such cases were autochthonous, and the rest were imported.
In 2009, there were 639 cases registered. All of them originated from abroad, save one.
