Israeli rabbis ask for help against West Nile virus

A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, led by a prominent rabbi, were due to gather at midnight yesterday on a hilltop in Israel to pray for divine aid.

A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews, led by a prominent rabbi, were due to gather at midnight yesterday on a hilltop in Israel to pray for divine aid.

But their entreaties were not, for once, over the division of the holy city of Jerusalem, or hostile Arabs, or the wayward behaviour of Israel's boisterous secular classes on the sabbath. They concerned an altogether smaller and currently more deadly subject: the mosquito.

According to the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, Rabbi David Batzri, a leader within Jerusalem's large ultra-Orthodox community, planned last night's "anti-mosquito" prayer meeting in the hope of putting an end to the West Nile virus, which was this week declared an epidemic by the Health Ministry.

Thirteen people, aged from 54 to 90, have died from the virus in Israel since August, and 180 have been diagnosed with it, although thousands more are likely to be infected, suffering only mild symptoms. Although healthy people usually recover from the disease, there has been a wave of panic among Israelis. Callers yesterday jammed local authority switchboards demanding pesticides be used to keep the mosquitoes at bay. Councils reported more than 1,000 calls a day - nearly 10 times the number received during the hype over the millennium cyber-bug last year.One official said some people had phoned merely to inform the authorities that they had spotted a mosquito at home.

The virus, which killed seven people in New York last year, is transmitted solely by mosquitoes which have bitten infected animals or - the chief culprit - birds. It can cause encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) and meningitis, both of which can be fatal, particularly among the elderly or those already suffering from a chronic medical condition.

This year's upsurge of the virus - which has been present in Israel for decades - is believed to have coincided with the seasonal migration of birds across Israel from Asia and Europe to Africa for the winter.