The authorities indian announced this week that they are trying to contain a Nipah epidemica rare virus transmitted from animals to humans and causing a strong fever with a high mortality rate. Here is what is currently known:
– What is the Nipah virus?
The first Nipah epidemic was recorded in 1998 after the virus spread among pig farmers in Malaysia. The virus is named after the town in this Southeast Asian country where it was discovered.
Epidemics of this virus are rare, but Nipah was classified by the World Health Organization (WHO), along with Ebola, Zika and Covid-19, as one of the diseases to be investigated as a priority due to its potential. to cause a pandemic.
It is usually transmitted to humans through contaminated animals or foodbut it can also be transmitted directly between humans.
The bats frugivores, natural carriers of the virus, have been identified as the most probable cause of the following epidemics.
-What symptoms do you present?
Symptoms include high fever, vomiting and respiratory infectionbut severe cases may be characterized by cseizures and brain inflammation leading to coma. There is no vaccine against Nipah. Patients suffer from mortality rate of between 40% and 75%, according to the WHO.
– And the previous epidemics?
The first Nipah epidemic left 100 dead in Malaysia and a million pigs were slaughtered to contain the virus.
It also spread in Singaporewith 11 cases and one death among slaughterhouse workers who were in contact with pigs imported from Malaysia.
Since then, the disease has been detected mainly in Bangladesh and India, which recorded their first epidemics in 2001. Bangladesh was the most affected country in recent years, with more than 100 deaths since 2001.
Two epidemics in India left more than 50 dead before being controlled.
The southern state of Kerala has recorded two deaths from Nipah and four other confirmed cases since last month, the fourth outbreak in five years.
– Does transmission from animals to humans increase?
The zoonosisdiseases transmitted from animals to humans that appeared thousands of years ago, have multiplied in the last 20 to 30 years.
The development of international travel allowed for a more rapid spread. Occupying increasingly large areas of the planet, humans are disrupting ecosystems and increasing the likelihood of random viral mutations transmissible to humans, experts say.
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The industrial livestock The risk of spreading pathogens between animals increases, and deforestation increases contact between wildlife, domestic animals and humans, which will favor the appearance of new diseases transmissible to humans.
According to estimates published in the magazine ‘Science’ in 2018, there are 1.7 million unknown viruses in mammals and birdsof which between 540,000 and 850,000 are capable of infecting humans.