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Four-year-old girl dies of malaria in northern Italy

A four-year-old girl has died of malaria in hospital in Brescia, near Milan, Italian media reported on Tuesday.

Published: 5 September 2017 11:00 CEST
Four-year-old girl dies of malaria in northern Italy
File photo of an Asian Tiger mosquito. Photo: Yuri Cortez/AFP

It is unclear how the girl contracted the disease; her family, from Trentino in the far north of Italy, had not recently been abroad.

According to local paper La Voce del Trentino, the girl had never travelled outside the country and the family had spent their summer in the nearby Veneto region of Italy. 

READ ALSO: 2,000-year-old teeth show malaria existed in the Roman Empire

After being treated first at a hospital in her hometown, the girl was transferred to Brescia's Civil Hospital after she lost consciousness, where there are specialists in treating tropical diseases.

An investigation has been opened in order to identify how the child caught the disease, and the hospital's paediatric department has been disinfected as a precautionary measure.

In December, the Health Ministry shared figures showing that over 3,500 cases of malaria had been reported in the previous five years, though in all but seven instances, the disease was imported rather than indigenous, meaning Italians who travelled to tropical and sub-tropical countries were at highest risk.

Italy was officially declared free of malaria in 1970, but environmental organization Legambiente warned in 2007 that it could make a comeback due to the effects of climate change.

In particular, warmer temperatures have brought mosquito species including the Asian Tiger mosquito, known to transmit several diseases, to Europe. 

In recent years, the first EU cases of West Nile fever were detected in Italy as well as Romania, while Ravenna in the north of the country experienced an outbreak of Chikungunya fever in 2007. was also detected in Italy. Both diseases are known to be transmitted by Asian Tiger mosquitoes. 

READ ALSO: Scientists have found a new antibiotic that could fight drug-resistant bacteria in ItalyA new antibiotic that could fight drug-resistant bacteria has been found in ItalyFile photo of laboratory workers: pressmaster/Depositphotos

 

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HEALTH

When can doctors in Denmark refuse to continue treating patients?

General Practitioners in Denmark have the right to break off a patient-doctor relationship in specific circumstances.

Published: 1 August 2024 16:35 CEST
When can doctors in Denmark refuse to continue treating patients?

Although doctors in Denmark have the right to decide not to continue treating a patient – requiring them to find a new GP – the circumstances in which this can happen are limited, and must be approved by health authorities.

The frequency in which the circumstances arise is also low. A doctor decided to no longer receive a patient on 375 occasions in 2016, according to the medical professionals’ journal Ugeskrift for Læger. The following year, newspaper Jyllands-Posten reported the figure at 458.

There are two main categories of circumstances in which a doctor can choose to take this step. The first is in instances of violent or threatening behaviour from the patient towards the doctor. 

The second (and most common) is when the doctor considers the relationship to have deteriorated to the extent that confidence has broken down, according to Ugeskrift for Læger.

It should be noted that patients are not bound by any restrictions in this regard, and can decide to change their GP without having to give any justification.

A patient also has the right to appeal against a doctor’s decision to ask them to find a new GP. This is done by appealing to the local health authority, called a Region in the Danish health system.

In such cases, a board at the regional health authority will assess the claim and if it finds in favour of the patient may order the doctor to attempt to repair the relationship.

Doctors cannot end a relationship with a patient purely because a patient has made a complaint about them to health authorities. This is because patients should have the option of making complaints without fear of consequences for their future treatment. 

However, if this is accompanied by the conclusion on the doctor’s part that there is no longer confidence in them on the part of the patient, they can remove the patient from their list.

The right to no longer see patients in the circumstances detailed above is provided by doctors’ collective bargaining agreements, the working conditions agreed on between trade unions and employer confederations under the Danish labour market system.

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