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SANAA (AFP) - Seventeen people in Yemen have died of Rift Valley Fever, Health Minister Abdullah Abdel Wali Nasher said Wednesday, quoted by the official Saba news agency.
"Seventeen people, suspected of having been contaminated by RVF, died in Hudaida province," west of Sanaa, the minister said without adding when the deaths occurred. A health ministry official, who asked not to be identified, said earlier that at least 77 people have died in Yemen in the past two days from the illness. "The fever was borne by mosquitoes," the official added. In neighboring Saudi Arabia, 17 people have died from the fever and 47 others have been hospitalized. Rift Valley Fever was first reported in the kingdom on September 11th in Jizan province bordering Yemen. The cases were the first reported outside Africa. Nasher said the ministries of health, agriculture and irrigation, had set up "a crisis center to spray insecticides in regions affected by the epidemic." He called on people living in affected areas not to transport livestock in the north of the country to prevent the disease from spreading. The fever, which affects domestic animals and can be transmitted to humans by mosquitoes, is believed to have been introduced to Saudi Arabia via sheep, a large number of which recently died in Jizan, according to the ministry. In Riyadh, the agriculture ministry announced Monday that it had suspended livestock imports from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, which are all on the Red Sea. The movement of livestock in and out of Jizan had also been banned. Saudi Health Minister Osama Shobokshi informed the cabinet Monday that the disease had been "brought under control and the relevant authorities are working hard to wipe out this disease quickly." Symptoms include hemorrhagic fever, encephalitis and eye problems, although human deaths from the disease are rare, according to experts. Since 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. |
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