2023-09-17 23:28:10
Appearing in 1998 among pig breeders in Malaysia, the Nipah virus has successively raged in Singapore and Bangladesh in recent years, before affecting India in recent days. Its mortality rate is between 40 and 75% according to the WHO and no vaccine has been developed to contain it.
A virus that could cause a global epidemic according to the WHO. The Nipah virus, named after the Malaysian village where the first pandemic appeared in 1998, has a mortality rate of between 40 and 75% according to the World Health Organization.
The symptoms listed in case of infection are: high fever, vomiting and respiratory infection in mild cases. In case of complications, the affected patient may suffer from seizures or brain inflammation leading to coma. Note that there is currently no vaccine to stop it.
Like Covid-19, Ebola or even Zika, this virus is placed by the WHO as one of the many diseases deserving priority research because of their potential to cause a global epidemic.
It is usually transmitted to humans through animals or contaminated food, but it can also be transmitted directly between humans. Fruit bats are identified as the natural carriers of the virus, causing successive epidemics.
Epidemics linked to the Nipah virus
The first outbreak detected in Malaysia in 1998 cost the lives of more than a hundred people, while leading to the slaughter of a million pigs to contain the spread of the virus. The latter then emerged in Singapore, via workers at a slaughterhouse who came into contact with contaminated pigs in Malaysia. It affected 11 people and caused one death.
As early as 2001, the Nipah virus affected Bangladesh and India. The first country cited has been the hardest hit by epidemics linked to this virus with more than a hundred people dead since that date. In India, two outbreaks claimed the lives of around fifty people before they were finally brought under control.
Since last month, the southern state of Kerala has recorded four cases and two deaths linked to the Nipah virus. A major testing campaign was carried out by the local government, which also took the decision to close schools. This epidemic is the fourth to hit the region in five years. Since its arrival in India in 2018, the virus has ravaged the country 17 times.
Between 540,000 and 850,000 viruses dangerous to humans
According to estimates published in the journal Science in 2018, there are 1.7 million unknown viruses in mammals and birds, of which 540,000 to 850,000 have the capacity to infect humans.
Present on Earth for thousands of years, zoonoses (diseases transmissible from animals to humans) have multiplied over the last 20 to 30 years on the globe.
The cause is the development of international travel, which has favored their expansion, as well as global warming pushing certain species to leave their ecosystem. Intensive agriculture and deforestation have also been singled out by scientists because they have accelerated the development of viral mutations.
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