“The discovery of an Anopheles sacharovi mosquito should not cause alarm for a possible return of malaria in Italy as the socio-economic and hygienic-sanitary conditions of our country are certainly very different from those of the past”. This is what the Higher Institute of Health states on its website following the discovery, along the Salento coast between Lecce and Otranto, of an Anopheles sacharovi mosquito, found in Italy approximately 50 years after the last report. This mosquito, together with the species Anopheles labranchiae, was associated with malaria transmission before the disease was eradicated from Italy in 1970.
“Furthermore – we read – a specific Ministerial Circular gives clear indications for the constant surveillance of human cases of imported malaria and establishes the interventions to be implemented in the territory in the presence of presumed native cases”.
The discovery of the mosquito is the result of joint research between the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, the Experimental Zooprophylactic Institute of Puglia and Basilicata and the National Health Authority (ASL) of Lecce, and was published in the journal Parasites and Vectors. The research, financed by the Ministry of Health and recently also by PNRR funds, has been started in Puglia and Basilicata since 2018. Until now only Anopheles labranchiae had been identified, already reported in other Italian regions and found in the Gargano and Metaponto and Anopheles superpictus, considered a secondary vector, present in limited areas of Basilicata. In both cases the densities do not appear epidemiologically relevant. At the end of 2022, the discovery in a rural area of Lecce of a single adult specimen, identified as Anopheles sacharovi, gave rise to a targeted entomological investigation the following year.
The discovery of Anopheles sacharovi for the ISS “is relevant from a scientific and health point of view because, after the reclamation works and the anti-malarial campaign after the Second World War, this mosquito was now considered to have disappeared from our territory”. “On the other hand – he concludes – it appears clear that entomological surveillance is of extreme importance and is necessary to prevent the risk of reintroduction of this disease into our country”.
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