Caltanissetta, three cases of malaria treated in less than a year at Sant’Elia

CALTANISSETTA – In less than a year, three cases of patients with malaria acquired abroad were admitted to the Sant’Elia hospital in Caltanissetta. The data was provided by the chief physician Giovanni Mazzola, director of the Complex Operating Unit of Infectious Diseases where one of the three patients is still hospitalized. “The first case admitted to the infectious diseases department of Sant’Elia concerns a 52-year-old architect who went to Nigeria for work reasons.

This patient – says Mazzola – had contracted a severe form of Plasmodium falciparum malaria for which, upon returning to Italy, he had suffered a very high fever with initial brain involvement and severe acute renal failure, for which he was repeatedly evaluated to undergo dialysis . Following a prompt diagnosis and the immediate start of antimalarial therapy (promptly found abroad) the patient recovered completely and definitively. The other two cases are very recent: a 65-year-old airplane pilot who contracted the parasite in Gabon (discharged from the department last week) and a 52-year-old Eni employee who returned from Nigeria, where he worked, still hospitalized. I remind those who must go to countries where malaria is endemic to carry out prophylaxis with specific drugs following the instructions of the Ministry of Health or the specialist in Infectious Disease ».