Identification of a new strain of hepatitis E virus from an outbreak in Namibia in 1995.

Endemic circulation of hepatitis E virus (HEV) in Namibia was suspected from serological data during an outbreak of non-A, non-B hepatitis in Rundu in 1995. The source of the outbreak was suspected to be the water supply, which had been compromised approximately 6 months earlier. Four HEV isolates from four different persons in this outbreak were successfully amplified, sequenced and analysed over a 451 bp region of a subgenomic fragment from the 3' end of the genome in ORF2.