 A
state of alert has been issued in Saudi Arabia in an attempt
to stop the spread of Rift Valley fever, which first struck
the country on September 11th. The outbreak of the illness
is the first documented outside of Africa.
The disease, which is spread from mosquitoes to livestock
and to humans, has killed at least 28 people and infected
129 others in the south of the kingdom near the border with
Yemen. More than 90 victims in Yemen have died.
Symptoms
of Rift Valley fever include hemorrhagic fever, encephalitis
and severe eye infections.
Saudi's
official SPA news agency reported on Sunday that King
Fahd has ordered the destruction of all livestock carrying
or suspected of carrying the deadly illness.
Last
week, all livestock imports from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea,
Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, all of which are located along
the Red Sea, were suspended. The official news agency
SABA in the neighboring country of Yemen also announced
a ban on imports of livestock from Africa last Saturday.
Experts
from the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control arrived in Yemen on Sunday to help
authorities in the fight against the spread of the disease.
World
Health Organization disease surveillance and response
expert Mike Ryan stressed that the outbreak demonstrates
how diseases traditionally thought of as restricted by
geography can be spread through imported animals, air
travel and unusual weather conditions. He said that there
was suspicion regarding infected cattle that may have
been imported from the Horn of Africa into Yemen.
Ryan
reported that the 1997-1998 flooding in Kenya and Somalia
triggered by El Niño weather pattern caused both
humans as well as herds of animals to group together,
providing the ideal circumstances for an epidemic.
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