( to seven years. The cycle will cont...)Kenya: Alert As Virus Leaps Over Buffer Zone,Health

to seven years.

The cycle will continue unless two things happen: pre-emptive measures are made to mitigate human and animal loses, or mutation of the virus - changing genetically and becoming even more virulent. Climate factors could also make it alter its visiting and parasitic habits.

In September, a UN Food and Agricultural Organisation publication quoted the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration warning that rise in temperatures in the region could spark an outbreak of the disease.

By early November, local weathermen had correctly predicted floods and landslides in several parts of the country, including North Eastern province.

"It was too obvious not to see it coming. But no pre-emptive action was taken. We are famous for closing the barn door after the horse has bolted," said the director of Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri), Dr Davy Koech, last week. He said there had been enough warning, but requirements such as animal vaccines and awareness programmes were brought in long after the virus had struck.

In candid discussions with top scientists from Kemri and US Centres for Diseases Control, it came out clearly that Africa has to rein in the bug as a joint and urgent concern.

The fever is geographically confined to Africa, except once in 2000 when an outbreak was reported in Saudi Arabia and, subsequently, in Yemen. The source was later traced to East Africa. The fever is generally found in eastern and southern Africa, mainly among livestock keeping communities. The most notable outbreak in Kenya was in 1950-1951, which resulted in the death of an estimated 100,000 sheep.

Exported from Sudan
In 1977, the virus was detected in Egypt, but it was suspected to have been exported there through infected animals from Sudan. It has once afflicted Senegal, in West Africa, following heavy floods. The 1998 outbreak was the most severe in Kenya. It caused 400 human deaths.
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