At least nine people in southern India have already died in cases related to an outbreak of the rare and extremely lethal Nipah virus, a newly emerging virus: it was discovered only 20 years ago that it could be transmitted from bats to humans.
The disease is incurable and can be transmitted from person to person. It has killed between 40 and 75 percent of people infected in most outbreaks.
Worrying statistics
These statistics indicate that Nipah has the potential to cause a deadly pandemic, which is why the World Health Organization (WHO) considers Nipah an urgent research priority, along with diseases such as Ebola and SARS. Of the nine people who have died so far in the city of Kozhikode, in Kerala, three cases of Nipah have been confirmed. The results of the other six are still being verified, and at least 25 other people have been hospitalized.
Nipah first appeared in Malaysia in 1998, when 265 people became infected with a rare disease that caused encephalitis or brain inflammation. In that outbreak, 105 people died, a mortality rate of 40 percent. Since then, there have been several smaller outbreaks in India and Bangladesh, with approximately 280 infections and 211 deaths, an average mortality rate of 75 percent.
Initially, these infections were produced by pigs. However, researchers have identified several species of fruit bats as the natural hosts of the virus. In some cases, humans have been infected after drinking sap from date palms that the bats may have contaminated.
A study of Nipah virus transmission suggested that saliva from infected patients is likely to spread the infection. For now, the priority is to identify the remaining cases of Nipah to ensure that the disease does not continue to spread.