Abstract:
With increased global travel, unique diseases from different parts of the world pose a new
category of differential diagnosis, and an incubation period of different infectious diseases
helps narrow differential diagnosis to point to one specific etiology. The normal incubation
period of Plasmodium falciparum malaria is 7-40 days. We report a case of symptomatic P.
falciparum malaria that manifested four years after a visit to a malaria-endemic area in a 51-
year-old female patient. Our case illustrates the importance of a broad differential with
regard to infectious disease including remote travel history and raises questions of the survival
of P. falciparum for four years despite the administration of traditional chemoprophylactic
agents.
