Just about the only figures to be seen on the streets of some towns and villages in the central region of the Malaysian peninsula are soldiers dressed like astronauts in bright orange suits. Their mission is to exterminate tens of thousands of pigs.
A mysterious virus spread by pigs has killed some 100 people, destroyed Malaysia's pork industry and all but wrecked its tourist trade since the beginning of the year.
For months, authorities blamed the deaths on Japanese encephalitis, spread from pigs to humans by mosquitoes. But health officials said yesterday that a newly detected virus had been confirmed as the major cause of the fatalities. A total of 88 patients have tested positive for the virus, and 11 have contracted both it and Japanese encephalitis.
Named "Nipah", after the village where it was first detected, the mysterious virus adds to the rising number of dangerous and fatal viruses detected by Atlanta-based scientists worldwide over the past decade. Researchers know little about it, though it is similar to the Hendra virus, carried by fruit bats, that killed two trainers and 15 race horses in Australia in 1994 and 1995.
The viral epidemic in Malaysia began last year and by the end of March had claimed 50 victims. But since then there has been a sharp increase in the number of deaths and the government has declared a state of emergency. By yesterday the death toll had officially risen to 96 dead out of a total of 254 cases in three Malaysian states. A group of inspectors from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta called in to help the government, said however that 116 people had died and 236 had fallen ill.
The authorities reported two new deaths and 10 new infections over the weekend in a pig-breeding village in worst-hit central Negeri Sembilan state. Victims become delirious and develop acute fevers. The government has banned the movement of horses and pigs while testing is carried out. All but one of the deaths in the epidemic have been in two pig-breeding regions.
After a pig farmer died in Sepang district near Kuala Lumpur's international airport at the weekend, authorities said they were considering spraying disinfectant from aircraft.
None of the tourist areas of Malaysia is affected, and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention have endorsed the assurances of officials that tourists are safe. But much damage has already been done to the tourist trade.
Television and newspaper photographs show soldiers in anti-infection gear spraying anti-mosquito fog and massacring swine wholesale. Up to the weekend they had slaughtered 740,000 pigs -
driving them to the edge of deep pits and shooting them - and expect to kill a further 100,000.
The worst affected districts have been closed to journalists, adding to the panic. Local people tell stories of dogs, cats and abandoned pigs roaming the streets of empty villages, with everywhere an overpowering stench of pig, alive and dead. The government has spent the equivalent of £5 million vaccinating people in high-risk occupations.
The opposition leader, Mr Lim Kit Siang, accused Kuala Lumpur of only half-hearted prevention measures when the outbreak began and of trying to hush up the problem to protect the tourist industry.
The issue is sensitive in Malaysia as the majority Muslim population do not eat pork and the 33 per cent Chinese community is the most affected. The collapse of the pigmeat industry however is putting a strain on supplies of beef and chicken.
