It will take four years to discover a cure for the potentially fatal Al-Khumra fever, which reappeared in Jeddah last week, according to Dr. Hussein Al-Barr, head of the Health and Environment Committee at the city's Municipal Council. Al-Barr, who is also a member of the Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi Chair at King Abdulaziz University set up to investigate the virus, said a team began working a year ago to identify how the virus is contracted, where it proliferates, and how to prevent its spread, but precise information remains obscure. “We still don't know exactly how it is carried, although our studies are pointing to three main possibilities – flies, mosquitoes and animal mites,” Al-Barr said. “To address them we need a lot of interaction between the ministries of health and agriculture, and the Mayor's Office needs to be making ten-times its current efforts to spray insecticides and exterminate all the mosquitoes in Jeddah. It should demand more money for extra help or bring in private companies to spray the horrific spread of mosquitoes.” The municipal council, Al-Barr added, receives dozens of complaints every day from the public concerning the proliferation of mosquitoes all over Jeddah. Meanwhile, Khaled Al-Mirghalani, Ministry of Health spokesman, said that six persons who had contracted the Al-Khumra virus had all been successfully treated and discharged from hospital. “All of Jeddah's hospitals have the facilities to provide treatment for the virus, but there is no single specific cure,” Al-Mirghalani said. Last week it was reported that four persons had been admitted to hospital with Al-Khumra, marking the first appearance of the illness in Jeddah for nearly 10 years. The four cases, detected in residents of north Jeddah on Tuesday, and the Mayor's Office ordered that the zone around their houses be sprayed with pesticide. Dr. Tariq Madani, a contagious disease specialist from King Abdulaziz University, said Al-Khumra was “more dangerous than Rift Valley Fever” and described the symptoms as high fever, inflammation of the liver and brain, and bleeding from the gums, nose, stomach, anus, womb, urinary tract or skin. “It is fatal for one in four,” Madani said. Available studies suggest that the virus is contracted through direct contact with animals, or through various types of mosquito. “The first information when it appeared in Makkah around ten years ago showed that all the persons infected had had contact with cattle or lived close to one of the four main abattoirs in the city. None of the infected had been bitten by rodents commonly associated with viruses of a similar nature,” Madani said.
