The low frequency of malaria in Makkah suggests that Saudi Arabia is in the consolidation phase of malaria eradication. The absence of local transmission of malaria is indicated by low frequency of malaria in children less than 5 years of age, and high frequency of malaria in non-Saudis is evidence of malaria importation. Health workers attending to foreigners with febrile illness from Pakistan, Nigeria, and India should consider malaria as their first line of suspicion.
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Memish et al. (2014) studied this question.