I’m in Italy currently and did not need to take any malaria tablets to come here. However I’m being assaulted by mosquitoes since coming here and after Googling I found malaria was eradicated in the 1960’s but can’t find out how exactly
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To add to the other answers, you may ask “why hasn’t it come back, after all, the mosquitoes came back after being killed by DDT”
The thing is, malaria has a multi-stage life cycle…a mosquito has to bite someone with malaria, then malaria has to propagate in the mosquito, then it has to bite someone else before it dies.
In a country like Italy, where doctors screen people for malaria and treat them, this chain of transmission is difficult to maintain, because most people with malaria are going to be getting treatment (which reduces the number of malarial parasites) and also won’t be out and about getting bitten by mosquitoes as much. But antimalarial treatments are much more effective at reducing transmission in countries where malaria is rare than in countries where it is common, so treatment alone doesn’t eliminate malaria in countries where it is widespread.
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