Arkansas Department of Health officials have identified a case of locally acquired malaria, the first such case of the mosquito-borne disease in the state in decades.
While Arkansas has had five other cases of malaria pop up this year, all were transmitted by mosquitoes abroad. The patient in this case, from Saline County, has not left the U.S., officials said Wednesday.
Arkansas has not seen malaria cases within the state in at least 30 years, one official said.
“Maybe 30 to 40 years since we’ve been tracking, we have not had a local case of malaria in our state,” Dr. Naveen Patil, ADH medical director of infectious diseases, told KARK-TV.
ADH officials noted that there have been other local outbreaks of malaria in other states this year, with seven in Florida and one each in Texas and Maryland.
The detection of four of those Florida cases and the Texas case were the first time locally acquired malaria had been detected in the entire U.S. since 2003. The Maryland case was detected in August.
The Florida and Texas malaria is the Plasmodium vivax variety, while the Maryland case was Plasmodium falciparum, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
ADH officials did not specify what strain of malaria they found in the Saline County patient, who was not named.
Malaria symptoms can begin showing up within 30 days of infection, and include fever, chills, tremors, head and body aches, nausea and vomiting. Without treatment, malaria can also lead to seizures, anemia, kidney damage, acute respiratory distress syndrome and even death.
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