The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the risk of the Nipah virus spreading is low following the confirmation of three recent infection cases in India and Bangladesh. Nipah, a virus transmitted from animals to humans, lacks a vaccine and carries a fatality rate of 40 to 75 percent, as outlined by the UN health agency.
Speaking at a press conference in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressed the recent headlines surrounding three Nipah cases, with two cases in India and one in Bangladesh, causing concerns of a potential wider outbreak. Tedros emphasized that after a thorough assessment, WHO determined the regional and global risk of Nipah virus spread to be low.
In India’s West Bengal state, two Nipah cases were confirmed last month, while a patient in Bangladesh succumbed to the virus last week. Tedros clarified that although the two outbreaks were geographically close along the India-Bangladesh border and shared similar ecological and cultural settings, they were not linked. Both regions are home to fruit bat populations, the natural reservoir of the Nipah virus.
Nipah virus was first identified in 1998 during an outbreak among pig farmers in Malaysia. India reported its initial Nipah outbreak in West Bengal in 2001. Notably, in 2018, Kerala witnessed at least 17 deaths from Nipah, followed by two fatalities in the same state in 2023 due to the virus.
