Brain Damaging Disease Spreads Panic in India: Reports Suspected Nipah Virus

A unique, brain damaging virus with no known cure causes death of more than10 people in southern India where medical crews are struggling to control the emerge of the deadly disease.
After two suspected cases reported in southern Karnataka, Indian health officers has suspected it as rare ‘Nipah Virus’ which is to become the next global health emergency.
In a report out on Monday the outbreak of this deadly virus is being explained where a 20-year-old man who’d traveled to Goa from Kerala with Nipah-like symptoms was under observation in a hospital in Goa, a state in western India.
Two others have tested positive for Nipah and are considered critically ill, and more than three dozen people have been put into quarantine since the outbreak began in Kerala.
A local report says, a nurse who treated some of the victims died Monday from the disease. In her final days the nurse, Lini Puthusheri wrote a note to her husband from a hospital isolation ward, asking him to take care of their two children.
“This is a new situation for us. We have no prior experience in dealing with the Nipah virus,” said K.K. Shailaja, health minister of the state,“we are hopeful we can put a stop to the outbreak”.
Nipah is one of a family of viruses carried naturally by several species of fruit bat across southern Asia and Australasia. It causes respiratory infection and brain damage and has a mortality rate in humans of up to 75 per cent. It can also infect farm animals.
According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, people can be infected with the Nipah virus after direct contact with patients of the disease.
“This is most commonly seen in the family and caregivers of Nipah virus-infected patients”, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi