Back in September this year the Costa Rica Health Minister had declared a sanitary alert due to an outbreak of malaria in the neighboring Nicaragua.

The alarm in Costa Rica has increased as the number of cases of this disease in Nicaragua has increased to close to 7000 cases.

The large numbers of Nicaraguans who travel this time a year to visit their families raise the risk in Costa Rica.

Daniel Salas, director of Health Surveillance, confirmed that several protocols are already in place to identify people coming from this country with suspicious symptoms. However, those that usually cross the frontier through illegal routes are out of any control.

“The workers in different activities that come from the neighboring country infected and are not detected promptly can generate new cases and that gives us a reason to worry”, stated Salas.

Although between the years 2012 and 2015 Costa Rica had not had any malaria cases there were a few patients in 2016 and this year there have been a total of 12 cases reported.

Tropical countries such as Costa Rica are areas were the mosquito Anopheles albimanus finds the perfect conditions to reproduce, it lives close to rivers and lakes in areas under 600-700 meters above sea level.

Malaria is a life-threatening disease usually transmitted through the bite of an infected Anopheles mosquito which carries the Plasmodium parasite. When the parasite is already in the human body it travels to the liver where it matures and after a few days it enters the bloodstream infecting red blood cells and multiplying. Malaria symptoms include high fever, headache, nausea, chills, profuse sweating, muscular pain and sometimes vomiting.

Basic preventive measures include the use of insect repellents, mosquito nets and fumigating your home.