INTERNATIONAL NEWS - A four-year-old Italian girl has died of cerebral malaria in northern Italy, a region free of the disease, in what doctors see as a very mysterious case.
Sofia Zago died in Brescia on Sunday night, after being rushed to hospital with a high fever on Saturday.
Italy is free of the Anopheles mosquito that carries cerebral malaria, the deadliest form of the blood disease. But after a scorching August, some fear that it might have reached Italy.
A flight could have brought it in.
Sofia had been on holiday with her parents at Bibione, an Adriatic resort near Venice.
Trento, where the girl's malaria was diagnosed on Saturday, lies within the Trentino region in the foothills of the Alps.
"It's the first time in my 30-year career that I've seen a case of malaria originating in Trentino," said Dr Claudio Paternoster, an infectious diseases specialist at Trento's Santa Chiara Hospital.
