BACKGROUND Rift Valley fever (RVF)-like disease was first reported in Tanzania more than eight decades ago and the last large outbreak of the disease occurred in 2006-07. This study investigates the spatial and temporal pattern of RVF outbreaks in Tanzania over the past 80 years in order to guide prevention and control strategies. MATERIALS AND METHODS A retrospective study was carried out ba...

Rift Valley Fever virus (RVFV) is a ss-RNA virus from the Bunyaviridae family found in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The virus is usually transmitted by mosquitoes and predominantly affects livestock; however, humans exposed to bodily fluids or tissue from infected animals can also be infected. In humans, Rift Valley Fever is usually characterized by mild febrile illness; however, in rare c...

To evaluate the importance of human exposure to Rift Valley fever virus in Chad, investigations were carried out to determine specific antibody prevalence in domestic ruminants during the 2002 rainy season. Results highlighted recent, substantial, active transmission of this virus.

CONTEXT Dental and skeletal fluorosis is endemic in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. Children are especially vulnerable to excessive fluoride intake because their permanent teeth are still being formed. Strategies to reduce the total fluoride intake by children are thus warranted. CASE PRESENTATION By combining the results of field studies in Ethiopia, the relevant pathways for fluoride intake have...

Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) is the causative agent of Rift Valley fever, a widespread disease of domestic animals and humans in sub-Saharan Africa. Laboratory rats have frequently been used as an animal model for studying the pathogenesis of Rift Valley fever. It is shown here that Lewis rats (LEW/mol) are susceptible to infection with RVFV, whereas Wistar-Furth (WF/mol) rats are resistant t...

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center, Division of Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System Operations (AFHSC-GEIS) initiated a coordinated, multidisciplinary program to link data sets and information derived from eco-climatic remote sensing activities, ecologic niche modeling, arthropod vector, animal disease-host/reservoir, and human disease surveillance for febrile i...

Previous studies of African mole-rats of the genera Heliophobius and Fukomys (Bathyergidae) in the regions of East and south central Africa have revealed a diversity of species and vicariant populations, with patterns of distribution having been influenced by the geological process of rifting and changing patterns of drainage of major river systems. This has resulted in most of the extant membe...

Evidence of infection of sheep and, to a lesser extent, cattle, with Rift Valley fever (RVF) virus was obtained from a sero-epidemiological study conducted on four farms in the Chisamba area of the Central Province of Zam­ bia. This area was affected by an epizootic of RVF in the 1973/74 rain season; clinical cases were again reported during the 1977/78 rains. The results suggest that RVF virus...

In early September 2012, a human case of RVF was reported in Mauritania. By 30 October 2012, a total of six regions had been affected with 34 human cases of RVF, including 17 deaths. Only the southern regions of Mauritania, those closest to the usual enzootic areas along the Senegal River, seem to have been involved in this event. Although no active cases in animals have been reported to the Wo...

We present and explore a novel mathematical model of the epidemiology of Rift Valley Fever (RVF). RVF is an Old World, mosquito-borne disease affecting both livestock and humans. The model is an ordinary differential equation model for two populations of mosquito species, those that can transmit vertically and those that cannot, and for one livestock population. We analyze the model to find the...