The World Health Organization on Friday said that a woman had died in Bangladesh on January 28 after contracting the Nipah virus infection.
The death in Bangladesh’s Rajshahi division came weeks after two Nipah virus cases were confirmed across the border in West Bengal.
The cases in India had already prompted airport screenings to be stepped-up in several Asian countries including Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Pakistan, Reuters reported.
However, the World Health Organization on January 30 said that the likelihood of the outbreak spreading to other Indian states or internationally was low.
The Nipah virus is a “zoonotic illness” transferred from animals such as pigs and fruit bats to humans. The virus can also be caught through human-to-human transmission.
It causes fever and cold-like symptoms in patients. The infection can also cause encephalitis, which is the inflammation of the brain, and myocarditis, or the inflammation of the heart, in some cases.
The patient in Bangladesh, aged between 40 years to 50 years and from Rajshahi division’s Naogaon district, developed symptoms consistent with the Nipah infection on January 21, including fever and headache followed by hypersalivation, disorientation and convulsion, the World Health Organization said.
The woman was taken to hospital when her condition worsened. She died on January 28.
Throat swabs and blood samples were collected, after which she was confirmed to have been infected with the virus a day later. Bangladesh’s International Health Regulations National Focal Point notified the global health authority about the case on February 3.
In its statement, the World Health Organization said that the woman had no travel history. However, it added that she had a history of consuming raw date palm sap.
All 35 persons who had come in contact with the woman were being monitored and had tested negative for the virus, the statement said, adding that no further cases had been detected so far.
In India, the two confirmed cases in West Bengal were of a 25-year-old woman and a 25-year-old man, both healthcare workers at a hospital in North 24 Parganas district’s Barasat.
They had developed symptoms in the last week of December, which later progressed to neurological complications. They were placed under isolation in early January.
After the cases were confirmed, the health authorities had launched an extensive public health response. More than 190 contacts had been identified, traced and tested, with all testing negative for the virus, the World Health Organization had said on January 30.
This is the seventh documented Nipah outbreak in India and the third in West Bengal, following outbreaks in Siliguri in 2001 and Nadia in 2007. The last reported outbreak of the disease in the country was in Kerala in August.
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