Nipah, a deadly virus that is carried by bats has already caused outbreaks across South East Asia and South Asia and has serious epidemic potential, according to a global health and infectious disease specialist.
What is the Nipah virus?
The Nipah virus was identified in 1999 in Singapore and Malaysia, and has sparked numerous outbreaks with mortality rates of between 40% and 90% and spread thousands of kilometers to India and Bangladesh, yet there are no vaccines or drugs against it, experts say.
Richard Hatchett, the chief executive of the CEPI Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations stated that twenty years have passed since its discovery, but the world is still not adequately equipped to discuss about the global health threat posed by Nipah virus.
A partnership between disease experts and private, public, civic and philanthropic organizations called CEPI, was set up in 2017 to try to speed up the development of vaccines against newly emerging and unknown infectious diseases.
One of the first diseases that they want to target is the Nipah virus, it is a virus carried primarily by certain types of pigs and fruit bats, which can also be transmitted directly from person to person as well as through food that is contaminated by the virus.
Nipah has spread to Bangladesh just two years after it was discovered. It has caused numerous outbreaks since 2001. In 2018, the Nipah outbreak was reported in Kerala, India and killed 17 people.
Hatchett stated that outbreaks of Nipah virus have so far been confined to South Asia and Southeast Asia, but the virus has serious epidemic potential because Pteropus fruit bats that carry the virus are all found throughout the tropics and the sub-tropics, which are home to more than two billion people.
He also said that Nipah can also pass from person to person, it could also spread into densely populated areas too. The two-day Nipah conference was co-hosted by CEPI and the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore and their focus was the deadly virus.
Wang Linfa, a Duke NUS professor said that there are currently no specific drugs or vaccines for Nipah virus infection, even though the World Health Organization has identified it as a priority disease.
Virus prevention
The infection from the Nipah virus can be prevented by avoiding exposure to sick bats and pigs in endemic areas and to not drink raw date palm sap.
There are additional efforts that are focused on surveillance and awareness that can help prevent future outbreaks. More research is needed in order to better understand the ecology of the Nipah virus and bats. They also want to include investigating questions like the seasonality of disease within reproductive cycles of bats.
Surveillance equipment should also include numerous reliable laboratory assays that can help for early detection of virus and other diseases in livestock and communities, and raising awareness of disease transmission and symptoms is important in reinforcing standard infection control practices in order to avoid human-to-human infections in hospital settings.
By using the Hendra G protein, a sub-unit vaccine produces cross-protective antibodies against HENV and NIPV has been used in Australia recently in order to protect horses against Hendra virus. This vaccine is said to offer great potential for henipavirus protection in humans too.
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