Nipah virus is a new and deadly brain and lung disease that emerged from Singapore and Malaysia ten years ago.
It is now spreading into rural India and Bangladesh killing up to three-quarters of the people who become infected in some outbreaks, scientists heard today (Thursday 3 April 2008) at the Society for General Microbiology's 162nd meeting being held this week at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
“People are catching this disease by drinking date palm juice or probably by eating fruit contaminated by the virus, or through contact with infected animals. We have seen nine outbreaks in Bangladesh since 2001, which killed 40-100% of the people who were infected”, says Dr Jahangir Hossain, a scientist working in the Dhaka Hospital at the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh (ICDDR,B).
Fruit bats are a natural reservoir of Nipah virus, and the first outbreaks in Singapore and Malaysia started when pigs on farms ate fruit which had been bitten by infected bats and dropped near their pens. The pigs developed coughs and breathing difficulties, and an epidemic spread across the Asian peninsula due to the pig trade. Pig farmers and abattoir workers became infected from sick pigs.
“Three outbreaks in Bangladesh were caused when people ate fresh date palm sap, a local sweet delicacy, which had been contaminated by bats.” says Dr Jahangir Hossain. “Because both people and animals in Bangladesh often eat fresh date palm sap and fruits which have been bitten by bats, contaminated food and domestic animals form an important transmission pathway for Nipah virus to infect people”.