A malaria death due to an imported Plasmodium falciparum infection in Sri Lanka during the prevention of re-establishment phase of malaria.

BACKGROUND: Sri Lanka has maintained a rigorous programme to prevent the re-establishment of malaria ever since the disease was eliminated in October 2012. It includes efforts to sustain case surveillance to ensure early diagnosis and management of malaria. Yet, in April of 2023 the death occurred of an individual with imported malaria. CASE PRESENTATION: The deceased was a 37-year-old Sri Lankan male who returned to Sri Lanka on the 10th of April after a business trip to several countries including Tanzania. He was febrile on arrival and consulted three Allopathic Medical Practitioners in succession in his home town in the Western Province of Sri Lanka, over a period of 5 days starting from the very day that he arrived in the country. Malaria was not tested for at any of these consultations and his clinical condition deteriorated. On the evening of 14th of April he was admitted to the medical intensive care unit of a major private hospital in the capital city of Colombo with multiple organ failure. There, on a request by the treating physician blood was tested for malaria and reported early the next morning as Plasmodium falciparum malaria with a high parasitaemia (> 10%). The patient died shortly after on the 15th of April before any anti-malarial medication was administered. The deceased had been a frequent business traveller to Africa, but with no past history of malaria. He had not taken chemoprophylaxis for malaria on this or previous travels to Africa. DISCUSSION: The patient's P. falciparum infection progressed rapidly over 5 days of arriving in Sri Lanka leading to severe malaria without being diagnosed, despite him seeking healthcare from three different Medical Practitioners. Finally, a diagnosis of malaria was made on admission to an intensive care unit; the patient died before anti-malarial medicines were administered. CONCLUSIONS: This first death due to severe P. falciparum malaria reported in Sri Lanka after elimination of the disease was due to the delay in diagnosing malaria.

Transfusion-induced Plasmodium falciparum malaria in a beta thalassaemia patient during the prevention of re-establishment phase in Sri Lanka.

BACKGROUND: Malaria was eliminated from Sri Lanka in 2012, and since then 50-60 imported malaria cases have been reported yearly. The country has remained malaria-free since, except for a single case of indigenous malaria in 2018. Blood donors are routinely screened for malaria, and transfusion malaria has not been reported in the country since 1966. CASE PRESENTATION: A 17-year-old splenectomized beta thalassaemia patient developed a transfusion-induced Plasmodium falciparum malaria infection following a blood transfusion 18 days earlier. The blood donor was an armed forces personnel who returned from South Sudan following a United Nations peace-keeping mission. The blood recipient's malaria infection took a complicated clinical course with elevated liver enzymes, lowered blood pressure and a prolonged parasite clearance time of 7 days but he recovered fully after two courses of artemether-lumefantrine interrupted by a course of intravenous artesunate. The prolonged parasite clearance is likely due to lack of splenic clearance of dead or damaged intra-erythrocytic parasites (due to a splenectomy) rather than to the parasite strain being resistant to artemisinin or the partner drug. This is corroborated by the fact that the blood donor's infection responded to artemether-lumefantrine with parasites being cleared on day 3. The blood donor who had not displayed signs or symptoms of malaria, had been screened for malaria on arrival in Sri Lanka and was negative on both microscopy and RDT. At the point of blood donation a blood smear examined microscopically was also reported negative for malaria, but retrospectively, the preserved smear of the donor's blood was found to contain P. falciparum parasites at a very low density. The donor when tested after the transfusion-induced case was diagnosed, also tested positive for malaria and was treated. CONCLUSIONS: After malaria elimination, transfusion-induced malaria from blood donors returning from malaria endemic countries poses a threat to preventing the re-establishment of the disease. Improved surveillance of arrivals in Sri Lanka from malaria endemic countries using more sensitive methods for screening than microscopy may be required to reduce this risk. More stringent criteria for selecting blood donors, and more effective methods of screening donors for malaria than microscopy may also be necessary.