year-old Bangladeshi worker who has been admitted into the ICU in a private hospital in Asir region with suspected laboratory characteristics of the Rift Valley Fever (RVF) has brought back harsh memories of the early reports of the outbreak of the disease in Jizan, border city with Yemen, in September 2000. The man was initially diagnosed with an unknown type of fever and elevated liver enzyme levels, both indicators of the RVF. The Asir Agriculture Department has recently acted on media reports of suspected cattle infected with the disease in different villages in the region by sending specimens from there for lab analysis in Riyadh for immunoglobulin M (IgM). The lab tests were positive for IgM, antibody to Rift Valley Fever virus in domestic ruminants. “There are strong suspicions of the RVF outbreak again in the region, but they are still not confirmed,” said Mubark Al-Mutalqah, director of the Asir Agriculture Department. The symptoms could be either a real viral infection or a side effect of the antibody injection previously used on the animals to ward off the virus, he said. “We are still waiting for the final lab reports from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture to confirm the source of the IgM as we are closely monitoring the area,” he said. If the disease were confirmed, the government agencies would work hard to combat it through sending planes to spray insecticide to kill the mosquitoes which are thought to be spreading the disease. RVF is a mosquito-borne zoonotic disease affecting domestic ungulates (especially goats and sheep) characterized by large epizootics during periods of heavy rainfall with associated outbreaks in humans. Most human infection is associated with an uncomplicated febrile illness or is unapparent. More severe complications include retinitis, Hepatitis, renal failure, hemorrhagic fever, encephalitis, and death. According to recent research, if the disease breaks out, it may be transmitted in an approximately 600 km area, including the flood plains of the wadis extending from the Sarawat mountains to the Red Sea coastal plains. The duration from disease onset to hospitalization is 3.3 days and the average time from disease onset to death is 6.3 days A Health Ministry report said Rift Valley Fever killed 124 people in the Kingdom between September 2000 and May 2001, while 760 of the 884 infected people recovered. The Kingdom has since either banned or carefully examined the import of livestock from several African countries as well as from Yemen. Although Rift Valley Fever was first identified in 1930, after an epidemic among sheep in Kenya, it has also affected Egypt, Madagascar, Mauritania and Somalia, according to the World Health Organization.
