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🇷🇸 Serbia /Health & Science

How a Virus Brought Germany and Kosovo Together

From N1 Serbia · () Serbian

Translated from Serbian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • Hyalomma ticks have spread northward, including to Germany and parts of Eastern Europe, as climate change has altered their range.
  • The ticks can transmit Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, a potentially fatal disease, making Kosovo a key location for research and medical experience.
  • German and Kosovar specialists built a long-term partnership focused on tick surveillance, virus diagnosis and public education.

A tick that actively follows people and animals instead of waiting in the grass has helped link German laboratories with Kosovo’s doctors. Hyalomma ticks, once mainly associated with Africa, Asia and southern Europe, have expanded northward and are now found in Germany and parts of Eastern Europe.

Kosovo has long been considered one of the disease’s hotspots. The danger comes from the virus the tick can carry, Orthonairovirus haemorrhagiae, which causes Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Its symptoms can resemble Ebola or Marburg virus disease. In severe cases, the infection damages blood vessels, causes internal bleeding and can lead to death.

It's a collaboration that benefits both sides.

· Petra EmerichThe German virologist described the partnership between German and Kosovar specialists.

The cooperation began after veterinarian Kurteš Šerifi read about an outbreak in Kosovo in 2005. Eleven people had fallen ill and five had died. At the time, Šerifi was completing a doctorate in Berlin. After returning to Kosovo and joining the University of Pristina’s Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, he found that the country lacked high-level biosafety laboratories and equipment to diagnose the virus.

We have the knowledge and diagnostic capacity, but we don't have the patients.

· Petra EmerichShe explained why German specialists benefit from working with doctors in Kosovo.

He contacted the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, which had the facilities, equipment and specialists Kosovo lacked. Among them was virologist Petra Emerich, who specializes in diagnosing viruses in the highest-risk category. Emerich met Šerifi in Kosovo in 2009 while serving in Germany’s Bundeswehr reserve. Their cooperation later developed into a system for monitoring the tick’s spread and diagnosing the virus, with support from a German Foreign Ministry biological-security program from 2013.

“It's a collaboration that benefits both sides,” Emerich said. “We have the knowledge and diagnostic capacity, but we don't have the patients.” German doctors therefore regularly visit Kosovo to exchange experience with local specialists. The partnership also focuses on education, particularly for farmers who may remove infected ticks from animals with bare hands. Šerifi said that if infected blood reaches even a small cut, it can transmit the virus, and “a large part of infections probably happens precisely that way.”

A large part of infections probably happens precisely that way.

· Kurteš ŠerifiHe referred to farmers removing infected ticks from animals with bare hands.
About this summary

Originally published by N1 Serbia in Serbian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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