JEDDAH, 28 August 2003 — An early warning unit is being established to monitor and contain infectious diseases affecting agricultural and animal resources in certain regions before they spread to other parts of the Kingdom, Agriculture Minister Dr. Fahd Balghaneim has said.
He said his ministry had taken a number of precautionary measures to prevent a renewed outbreak of Rift Valley Fever (RVF) in Jizan, where a previous appearance of the disease killed more than 100 people.
The move comes after Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, ordered the authorities last week to make every effort to prevent a fresh RVF outbreak in the Jizan region.
“We have supplied adequate amounts of vaccines for various contagious diseases, especially RVF, and deployed veterinarians and other staff to carry out the vaccinations,” the minister told Al-Watan Arabic daily.
Balghaneim said insecticide continued to be sprayed at swamps created by recent floods in Jizan. “We are also testing mosquitoes in the region to discover what viruses they are carrying.”
The Ministry of Agriculture has established a laboratory equipped with modern facilities to carry out medical tests and check the effectiveness of spraying insecticides, he said.
RVF is a disease which primarily affects animals but occasionally causes illness in humans as well, leading to high morbidity and mortality. The death of RVF-infected livestock can lead to substantial economic losses.
According to the World Health Organization, many different species of mosquitoes are vectors for the RVF virus. The RVF virus is primarily spread among animals by the bite of infected mosquitoes. In different regions different species of mosquito may prove to be the predominant vector.
“Aedes mosquitoes, for example, may acquire the virus from feeding on infected animals and is capable of transovarial transmission (transmission of the virus from infected female mosquitoes to offspring via eggs), so new generations of infected mosquitoes may hatch from their eggs,” the WHO said in a statement.
