Australia's Top End warned over killer virus

Australia's Top End communities are being told to cover up, with doctors warning there's little they can do to help people infected with a mosquito-borne virus that has killed a man.

The man died on Friday from brain damage at Royal Darwin Hospital after contracting Murray Valley encephalitis (MVE) in rural Darwin.

MVE killed a man in Western Australia last year and a young child from the state's north is being treated for the condition.

Friday's death is the first from MVE in the Darwin region for almost a decade.

While such fatalities are rare, doctors say people should cover up and avoid being bitten because there is no specific treatment for MVE, which is transmitted by the common banded mosquito.

"All we can do is support them ... get them fluids and food, maintain their vital functions," Royal Darwin Hospital neurologist Dr Jim Burrow said yesterday.

"We just observe and see what happens. People, if they are going to recover or improve, tend to do so fairly quickly."

Senior Northern Territory's medical entomologist Peter Whelan said about one person in 1000 bitten by infected mosquitoes caught the disease.

One in four of these people die from the infection and those who survive often face a bleak outcome.

"Even if you do survive, there's a large number of people who have a major disability afterwards," Dr Burrow said.

"So the only thing that we can do is to avoid getting bitten by the mosquitoes."

Initial symptoms include fever, drowsiness, headache, stiff neck, nausea and dizziness.

There are tremors and seizures, especially in young children, with the virus in some cases progressing to delirium and coma, leading to paralysis or brain damage.

The health department issued a warning about the disease on Friday, about the same time as the Darwin man died. A spokesman confirmed he lived in a rural area within 80km of the city.

Earlier this month, MVE spread south from the Kimberley, where it caused a death last year, to areas of the Pilbara affected by flooding.

Testing of chickens last week at Darwin's Berrimah Veterinary Laboratories confirmed the virus was in the rural suburbs, as well as the Katherine and Barkly regions.

"Precautions against being bitten by mosquitoes should be taken in the Barkly region and all northern regions until the end of July," Mr Whelan said.

In the past 30 years only 20 people in the Territory have contracted the disease and Dr Burrow said people should not panic.

- AAP