Nipah virus and bats

Abstract

Since the initial outbreak in Malaysia, small outbreaks of Nipah encephalitis have been reported almost annually in Bangladesh. Epidemiological studies have shown that the virus could be transmitted from bat to human and from human to human. Wildlife studies have also shown that the virus was widely distributed in at least 10 genera and 23 species of bats in a large part of Asia and Africa – a region that stretches from Australia and southern China, and from Indonesia to as far west as Ghana, a region with a total population of more than 1.4 billion people. As bats are long distant flying, gregarious animals living in large colonies which could exchange novel viruses from one species to another, it is not unexpected that the seroprevalence of Henipavirus among bat colonies are relatively high. The widespread distribution of both the Henipavirus and its hosts also means that the virus will remain an important cause of zoonotic disease.