Travel-associated malaria cases: place of infection for cases imported to the European Union/European Economic Area
To inform public health authorities and EU/EEA citizens of the risk related to malaria, the maps and table below show the places where travel-associated malaria cases reported to ECDC were likely to have been infected.
Figure 1. Distribution of travel-associated malaria cases reported to ECDC, by place of infection, 2022
Figure 2. Distribution of travel-associated malaria cases reported to ECDC, by place of infection, 2018–2022
Download the data: number of travel-associated malaria cases reported to ECDC, by place of infection, 2022 and 2018–2022
About the data
The report is based exclusively on the places of infection reported by EU/EEA countries to ECDC, using the most recently validated data available in TESSy (as of May 2024).
Data on place of infection were provided at the sub-national level for the EU outermost regions*, while for other regions, it is at the national level. Cases infected in the EU outermost regions were classified as travel-associated and were not included in the national count for France, Portugal or Spain. Travel-associated cases infected within mainland EU/EEA were excluded.
Information on the transmission events occurring within mainland EU/EEA are described in ECDC’s Annual Epidemiological Reports.
In this summary, in order to remove outliers, we included the places of infection for which there was at least one confirmed malaria case (as per the EU case definition), with cases reported either in two different years over the past five years or by two different EU/EEA countries. All Plasmodium species were included.
The data presented in this summary should be interpreted with caution due to the following:
- the data were included as reported by EU/EEA countries and were not validated by the health authorities in the places of infection
- the data were reported with some delay, and may not imply ongoing transmission
- this summary does not account for regional disparity within the places of infection, since some regions have a higher risk of infection than others.
About malaria:
Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a protozoa and spread by Anopheles mosquitoes. Malaria is not endemic in mainland Europe and the vast majority of the cases are travellers infected outside of the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA). Malaria is a notifiable disease at the EU level and surveillance data is collected by ECDC through The European Surveillance System (TESSy).
*EU outermost regions include Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Réunion, Martinique, Mayotte and Saint-Martin (France), the Azores and Madeira (Portugal), and the Canary Islands (Spain).