If Kerala was at the receiving end of all kinds of virus attacks last year with over 400 lives snuffed out, battling the Nipah virus (NiV) is definitely going to pose a challenge of epic proportions. The health department is not chary of admitting the absence of proper treatment protocols. Reason: It’s a new disease caused by a virus unheard of in this part of the country. When the first death occurred on May 5 with symptoms of severe fever and delusion, health officers had no clue it could be due to the deadly virus. But when another person from the same family passed away on May 18, the department decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea to send the samples to the National Institute of Virology, Pune.
Soon, samples of quite a few other patients with similar symptoms began finding their way to Pune. To say the state department was caught by surprise when most samples turned out to be positive on Sunday night would be an understatement. With about two dozen admitted to hospitals with similar symptoms, the little-known Perambra in Kozhikode district could not be blamed for hitting the panic button. If the face of the 2009 outbreak of H1N1 virus (swine flu) in Pune was its first victim, the young school girl Reeda Sheikh, Kerala found its own face in 31-year-old nurse Lini, who succumbed to the deadly virus after treating an infected patient.
The National Centre for Disease Control and All India Institute of Medical Sciences are assisting the state. The former has said that migratory bats are the likely source of the virus, but the National Animal Husbandry Department has chosen to disagree. Their theory of no domestic animal having contracted the disease points to the likelihood of the virus being carried from infection-prone Bangladesh by migrant labour, though none from the latter category figures in the infected list. Sure, NiV is yet to be declared an epidemic but experts suggest it is best to impose travel restrictions near ground zero. Not sure if it will go down well at the macro-level, in a state dependent on tourists to sustain its economy.