Here in Madrid, I was surprised to read last week in El Pais (the major Spanish daily paper) of an outbreak of Leishmaniasis within a few kilometres just to the S.W. of the city centre.
I was surprised, as I have always been under the impression that this disease is restricted to the tropics, where it is a major serious scourge spread by the bite of sandflies. Cutaneal Leishmaniasis is nasty but is less severe than the visceral form, which if untreated can be fatal.
So far, since July of 2009 there have been 240 confirmed cases centred on the district of Fuenlabrada, across 3 parks (La Paz, Solidaridad, and Bosquesur). About one third of cases have been of the visceral form.
The area forming the "epicentre" is an urban park/woodland surrounded by development which has an unusually high population of hares, due to a lack of hunting, or predation by raptors or foxes.
Of some 138 hares trapped and tested by the health authority medical technicians, 40 were found to be carriers of the leishmania parasite. These hares form a reservoir and food source for the "plebotomo" (which I take to be the sandfly) which then infects when it bites another mammal (dog or human). The fly is silent and smaller than a mosquito. Victims bitten in the danger months (May to October) begin to show symptoms (high fever etc) around Nov/Dec after a longish incubation period.
The authorities are in process of netting hares to eliminate the population here entirely and then anaesthetising and destroying them humanely.

The point of all this is that Extremadura just to the west is a major birding destination and surely has substantial populations of hares and other potential carriers of the desease and while the authorities say the Fuenlabrada outbreak is the only known area of Spain so affected, surely other outbreak areas have yet to be dicovered, and could all this be a side effect of higher mean temperatures?


Regards,Mike P