ETIDIOH - NEW

  The Hague, December 2 (Xinhua)  Dutch Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Safety and Nature, Femke Wilsma, reported on December 1 that the country had confirmed its first death from the H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus . In a letter to the House of Representatives that day, Wilsma stated that the Institute of Biological Veterinary Medicine at Wageningen University had recently reported that a kitten at a goat farm tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus .  The kitten was found dead by its owner.  The remaining seven kittens from the same litter also died after being given to other new owners, suggesting that they may have also been infected with the avian influenza virus, but the specific route of infection is still uncertain. The letter stated that, according to the cat owner, the mother cat had brought back a dead wild bird , which was suspected to have carried the avian influenza virus, and the kittens were infected ...

  {Excerpt} Risk statement This risk assessment is based on the current epidemiological and epizootic situation of Rift Valley fever (RVF) in Senegal and Mauritania , from 20 September through 8 October 2025. The risk assessment was conducted separately for each country . However, the findings indicate that the level of risk is the same for both countries across all levels, for both human and animal health .   During this period , Senegal reported 119 confirmed human RVF cases , including 16 deaths , resulting in a case fatality rate (CFR) of 13.4% . Cases were recorded across eight health districts in three regions of Senegal, with the majority in Saint-Louis Region with 110 cases (92%) followed by Louga (four cases) and Matam (one case).  The affected districts in Saint-Louis Region : Podor, Richard-Toll, Dagana, and Saint-Louis are located along the northern border with Mauritania along the Senegal River.   The most affected age groups were 15- 35 years ...

  Abstract Orf virus (ORFV), the prototype species of the Parapoxvirus genus within the Poxviridae family (subfamily Chordopoxvirinae), is a global pathogen infecting sheep, goats , and other ruminants , with zoonotic potential for humans . In this study, an outbreak of ORFV infection occurred in a sheep flock in Changling County, Jilin province, China , causing papules, pustules, and crusting lesions on the lips and eyelids. Typical parapoxvirus particles were observed using electron microscopy, and a wild ORFV strain was isolated, characterized, and designated as ORFV-CL24 . To clarify the epidemiological and genomic characteristics of ORFV in the region, we completed its whole-genome sequencing (GenBank accession number: PV126639). Genome analysis revealed that ORFV-CL24 shares a conserved structure with other isolates available in GenBank, which possess a complete genomic sequence of 138,500 bp of dsDNA harboring 131 putative open reading frames (ORFs) flanked by inverted termi...