WHO Lowers Nipah Virus Spread Risk After Cases in India and Bangladesh

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (Wikimedia Commons/Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union/Julien Nizet)

JAKARTA - The World Health Organization (WHO) said the risk of spreading the deadly Nipah virus is low, after three new cases of infection were recently confirmed in India and Bangladesh.

Nipah, which spreads from animals to humans, has no vaccine and its death rate ranges from 40 to 75 percent, according to the U.N. health agency.

"In recent weeks, three Nipah cases - two in India and one in Bangladesh - have made headlines and raised concerns about a wider outbreak," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference in Geneva, AFP reported (12/2).

The WHO assessed the risk of regional and global spread of the Nipah virus and found the risk to be low, he added.

Two Nipah cases were confirmed last month in the Indian state of West Bengal, while a patient died in Bangladesh last week after contracting the virus.

"The two outbreaks are not related, although both occur along the India-Bangladesh border, and have some common ecological and cultural conditions, as well as populations of fruit bats known as natural reservoirs of the Nipah virus," Tedros said.

It is known that the Nipah virus was first identified in 1998 after spreading among pig farmers in Malaysia.

In India, the first Nipah outbreak was reported in West Bengal in 2001.

In 2018, at least 17 people died of Nipah in Kerala, and in 2023, two people died of the virus in the same southern Indian state.

Symptoms include high fever, vomiting, and respiratory tract infections, but severe cases can involve seizures and brain inflammation resulting in coma.