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By the end of March 2002, a collection of some 200 gazelles, kept under semi range conditions in Saudi Arabia, was hit by a highly fatal peracute disease. The morbidity rate was 51% while the case mortality rate was 100%. Clinico-pathological and virological investigations were carried out. A virus was isolated from the ailing gazelles which was identified as Peste des Petits Ruminants virus (PPRV). Epidemiology of the disease in the Arabian peninsula is discussed.

Rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) emerged in 1984 in China and subsequently a single strain apparently dispersed worldwide killing millions of rabbits. Two isolates that caused outbreaks in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have been sequenced and analysed phylogenetically. The Saudi Arabian lineage is directly descended from the Chinese strain, but the Bahrain isolate occupies a distinct and more divergent lineage than the Chinese virus implying that epidemic RHDV strains have emerged at least twice during the past 20 years and are co-circulating in both domestic and wild rabbits.

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