West Nile virus
Virus del Nilo Occidental
- Date
- 1937 · confidence high
- Place
- West Nile District, Uganda
- Credited to
- K. C. Smithburn and colleagues (Yellow Fever Research Institute, Entebbe)
- People
- 👤 Kenneth C. Smithburn1904–1973
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
Isolation of a new flavivirus in the blood of a feverish woman. Decades later it became a global threat, reaching New York in 1999.
Published in 1940. The Entebbe institute, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, isolated several arboviruses.
What it led to
- arbovirus surveillance
- studies of mosquito-borne encephalitis
- the response to its spread across the Americas