An outbreak of what appears to be a new haemorrhagic fever has brought home how frightening little we know about deadly African viruses. Three people have died and a fourth was ill as 麻豆传媒 went to press.
In early September a 36-year-old woman living near Lusaka in Zambia fell ill and was airlifted to South Africa, where she died. Alarms were raised when a paramedic and a nurse who tended her died two weeks later. The latest person to succumb is a nurse who tended the paramedic.
On Sunday, South Africa鈥檚 (NICD) announced that the culprit was an arenavirus, a family of viruses carried by rodents. While several arenaviruses, including Sin Nombre, cause haemorrhagic fevers in the Americas, there was thought to be only one in Africa: , which kills around 5000 people a year in West Africa. 鈥淣ow suddenly there鈥檚 this,鈥� says Bob Swanepoel of the NICD, an expert on haemorrhagic viruses including the infamous Ebola and Marburg, which belong to the filovirus family.
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The US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, is sequencing the Zambian virus to see how it is related to other arenaviruses and whether it is a new strain or one so far unidentified. 鈥淚t鈥檚 shocking how little we know about the viruses circulating in Africa,鈥� says Swanepoel.
In Africa, arenaviruses are carried by a common farm pest, the (below).
