A rare viral strain of monkey fever has killed a 60-year-old woman from Mauxi village in Goa, officials have confirmed. The Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), the official name for ‘monkey fever’, is said to be spread through ticks, a parasite commonly found on monkeys. Weeklyvoice.com reports: The victim from the village in North Goa, 50 km from Panaji, expired at the Goa Medical College Hospital located on the outskirts of Panaji, where she was admitted last week after the fever worsened. Confirming the death, Utkarsh Betodkar, state epidemiologist at the Directorate of Health Services, said that screening of villagers of Mauxi in Sattari sub-district has been upped. “Because of the screening, we have discovered more cases, which are being treated now,” Betodkar said. Over the last one month, 24 people tested positive for the disease, the official said. In April last year, a team from the National Centre for Disease Control had visited Pali village in Sattari, after KFD claimed nine lives in quick succession. KFD is caused by a similarly named virus which was first identified in 1957, when it was isolated from a sick monkey from the Kyasanur forest in Karnataka. Since the time of its discovery, around [...]