LONDON A new report by the World Health Organization warns that malaria is taking hold again in Europe's mosquitoes, New Scientist magazine said. Drainage, drugs and insecticides eradicated malaria from Europe by the 1960s, but now civil disorder and disease threaten to bring it back unless controls are stepped up. Europe faces "a serious risk of an uncontrollable resurgence of malaria," WHO said in its report.

It says that cases in the European Union jumped to 12,328 in 1997 from 2,882 in 1981. Despite access to good medical care, up to seven percent of victims die because European doctors may not recognize the unfamiliar disease until it is too late. European travelers bring malaria back from countries where it is endemic, and the fear is that local mosquitoes could get the parasite and re-establish a local transmission chain.

The migration of refugees, a massive increase in the 1970s in irrigation canals where mosquitoes can breed, and the demise of public health programs with the collapse of communism, have led to a "dramatic resurgence" of the disease, WHO says. Good medical care, surveillance and chilly winters will prevent malaria from re-establishing itself in northern Europe, but the mosquito species that live in southern Europe are better at maintaining the parasite.

"The risk for the reappearance of the disease in some areas of southern Europe...is real," the report said. (Reuter)