2023-09-20 01:35:53
Nipah virus antibodies were found in fruit bats from 10 states in India. However, only Kerala has suffered from Nipah outbreaks since 2018.
The current wave of the Nipah virus, affecting Kozhikode district in the state of Kerala, is the fourth in the last five years. So far, there are six infected by the disease. Two people died, while four are responding positively to medical treatment.
(You may be interested in: The latest: the Nipah virus would be circulating in at least 10 states in India).
Contingency zones similar to those for covid-19 have been established in the area. Nipah has a mortality rate of 40 to 70%, according to World Health Organization records.
According to Kerala Health Minister Veena Geroge, the main carriers of the virus are thought to be bats and fruit trees. To check the prevalence of the virus in animals, surveys have been conducted in 14 states and 2 Union Territories from the National Institute of Virology of the Indian Council of Medical Research in Pune.
From the surveys, it was revealed that in 10 of these states there are fruit bats with Nipah antibodies. The study was carried out with the intention of identifying risk areas of contagion and taking precautions to prevent other outbreaks in the country, according to Pragya Yadav, leader of the Maximum Containment Laboratory at the Institute of Virology.
Why does Nipah virus only have outbreaks in Kerala?
The carriers of the Nipah virus are bats of the species pteropus
According to experts, in conversation with the traditional local media with information in English The Hindustan Time, the Nipah virus could have become endemic in the bat population of Kerala.
In May 2018, the first outbreak of the virus in southern India occurred in the district of Kozhikode, with 21 deaths and 23 confirmed cases. Subsequently, two outbreaks were confirmed in 2019, in Kochi district and in 2021, in Kozhikode, both in the state of Kerala, with two deaths recorded.
The WHO explains that bats of the pteropus species, also known as ‘flying foxes’, would have been the origin of the virus outbreaks in southern India. These fruit bats are natural carriers of the Nipah and Hebra virus, which is present in their urine and possibly in feces, saliva and birth fluid secretions.
(Also read: Nipah: this is how the virus that has kept India on alert acts in the human body).
Another reason for Nipah outbreaks referred to by experts is attributed to the cultural custom of drinking fresh toddy or sweet tree sap that can be contaminated by infected bats.
In India and tropical Asia, the production of palm wine is a traditional custom carried out by farmers and becomes one of their main sources of economic income. The wines (known as ‘toddy’) are made from coconut and palmyra trees, collecting the sap from the roots.
In some parts of India, non-alcoholic sap (‘neera’) is refrigerated and distributed, and is a product similar to fruit juices. In Kerala, wine or ‘toddy’ is also used as a substitute for yeast and mixed with rice dough to prepare bread.
In the towns of Kerala it is a cultural custom to climb coconut trees with ropes, barefoot and with bare hands in order to obtain the fruits and different elements from the palms, which have uses ranging from the preparation of traditional dishes such as curry or appam (sweet bread) even to make sheds and ladles.
These practices could be some of the reasons for contagion in this area, due to ingesting raw sap from palm trees contaminated by secretions or climbing trees covered with bat excrement.
Health workers protecting themselves to care for a person with Nipah virus, in India.
How does Nipah virus spread?
In the first recorded endemic, between 1998 and 1999 in Malaysia, bats infected other animals, such as domestic pigs, through their secretions and excretions.
According to the World Organization for Animal Health, fruit bats approached pig farms in Malaysia after different deforestations in the area. The fruit trees that attracted them from the tropical forest.
From there, the disease spread between farms and reached Singapore. In addition to this type of contagion, reports from the outbreaks in Bangladesh suggest that transmission was made directly from bats to people, due to consumption of raw sap from contaminated palm trees and contact with trees that were covered with excrement and secretions. of bats when climbing them. Experts do not rule out the possibility that Nipah has gone unnoticed in other states.
LAURA NATHALIA QUINTERO ARIZA
EL TIEMPO SCHOOL OF MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM.
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