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Article: Rift Valley fever potential, Arabian Peninsula.(Letter to the editor)
- Article from:
- Emerging Infectious Diseases
- Article date:
- March 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To the Editor: Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus causes severe disease, abortion, and death in domestic animals (especially young sheep, cattle, and goats) in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Humans are infected by mosquitoes, which maintain epizootic transmission, or through exposure to infected animal tissue. Although human disease may be mild, sometimes severe retinitis, meningoencephalitis, or hemorrhagic fever syndromes may develop in patients. In Africa, epizootics and associated human epidemics usually follow heavy rainfall (1).
RVF was first confirmed outside Africa in September 2000. The outbreak in southwestern coastal Saudi Arabia and neighboring coastal ...