Has malaria ever been in the UK?

OK i know malaria is a tropical disease that is only transmitted by the female anophaline mosquito, which is only found in the hotter parts of the world, what makes me ask this Q is I am having a debate with one of my collegues who says that once malaria was in the UK (since man and records began), which I disagree with as our country is not hot enough for the above mossie to live, so just trying to solve the debate. I know people come back from the warmer climates with 1 of the 4 starins, so not counting that. Can you help?

Sweating sickness was thought to be miliary fever and not malaria due to temp/enviroment/.Looked on the net for that bit, So still debating!

of course it did it happens when people dont get their jabs before going abroad and they fetch it within their blood

yeh i new someone that came home with it and spent along time in the tropical disease hospital in maida vale!

Get your jabs and take the pill before you go and when you come home. Some people really do not do the research when going away!

Yes, of course it has. It was known as the "sweating sickness" and even Henry VIII was terrified of it so it wasn't that long ago. Well, a few hundred years ain't long if you are thinking millennia!!!!

I understand some years ago a man in Colnbrook, near the airport became ill. Some days later he consulted his GP and tests found he had Maleria. NEVER having been out of GB this seemed a mystery. BUT............he remembered being bitten by a mosquito whilst in his living room, (still had the inflamed area on his arm). It was decided that one mosquito must have come into his house via a suitcase with his friend returning from holiday. The friend was staying the night before travelling the following day further up north to his own home. The man recovered fully.

No Malaria has never been indiginous to the UK...;

yes there was malaria in the UK but it died out, perhaps because the UK mossies mutated. At the end of the 1914-1918 war the authorities were actually worried that if enough malaria infected troops came home from the near east the disease would get hold again.

Yes, malaria was endemic in the UK. The draining of swamps and reduction of other mosquito habitat and introduction of other public health measures finally eliminated malaria from the UK (and the US) By the way, malaria is not exclusively a tropical disease, there are anopheles vectors of malaria that exist in northern climates.