The Seven-Decade Transnational Hunt for the Origins of the Kyasanur Forest Disease
On the origins and early research on the Kyasanur Forest Disease, a zoonotic disease hitherto seemingly confined to parts of the Karnataka state in south India but now increasingly reported from neighbouring states. KFD is caused by a tick-borne flavivirus that first emerged out of the forests of the Western Ghats in the late 1950s. The story is also about the early research on the virus by the Rockefeller Foundation-run Virus Research Centre (now the National Institute of Virology), Pune. Read the story here.