More than 100 people have contracted typhoid in a region of Saudi Arabia already hit by the deadly Rift Valley Fever (RVF), newspapers said Monday.
Okaz said 118 people, including three Pakistanis, have caught typhoid in the southern region of Jizan which borders Yemen, but it reported no deaths from the contagious disease.
The death toll from RVF, a virus that has affected the Arabian peninsula since September, has risen to 108 in Saudi Arabia, the health ministry said at the start of this month.
A toll from Yemen's health ministry in late October gave a death toll of 109 for that country.
The symptoms of Rift Valley Fever include hemorrhagic fever, encephalitis and eye problems, although human deaths are supposed to be rare, according to medical experts.
The virus is usually contracted from mosquitoes, or by contact with the blood, bodily fluids or organs of infected animals.
Typhoid fever, meanwhile, is contracted by eating food or drinking water infected with salmonella. Death rates of 10 percent can be reduced to less than one percent with appropriate antibiotics, according to the World Health Organization -- RIYADH (AFP)
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