Italy opens manslaughter probe over child’s malaria death

ROME: Italian prosecutors have opened a manslaughter inquiry into the death of a four-year-old girl who was killed by malaria in northern Italy in a medical mystery that has gripped the country.

The girl, Sofia Zago, had not travelled to any at-risk countries but had spent her summer holiday with her family at the seaside in Italy’s Veneto region, which like Europe as a whole is typically malaria-free.

She had been admitted for diabetes treatment to the paediatric department of the Santa Chiara hospital, which was also treating a family that had contracted malaria during a trip to Burkina Faso.

Experts are exploring whether the disease was passed from the family to Sofia via a mosquito bite, while prosecutors in Trento are investigating whether the girl could have caught it from a reused needle at the hospital.

The hospital has said it uses only disposable, single-use needles. Both the family and Sofia were suffering from the same type of malaria – plasmodium falciparum – but experts were trying to determine whether they were affected by the same strain.

Different strains would rule out contamination in the hospital. Sofia’s autopsy was scheduled for Thursday. Only some types of mosquito, called anopheline, are able to transmit the disease from person to person.