MALIGNANT catarrhal fever (MCF) is a fatal disease of wild and domestic ruminants, with severe and widespread inflammatory and degenerative changes in affected animals. It typically has a short, dramatic clinical course, characterised primarily by high fever, severe depression, swollen lymph nodes, salivation, diarrhoea, dermatitis, neurologic disorders and ocular lesions often leading to blindness (Plowright and others 1990). MCF is increasingly being recognised as the cause of significant economic losses in several …