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Two cases of the deadly Nipah virus in India have prompted authorities in several Southeast Asian nations including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to step up airport screening to prevent the spread of the infection. But what is Nipah virus, and how worried should people be?

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Transcript
00:00We'll be discussing Nipah virus and the recent reports from India. It is one of the many viruses
00:18that bats and fruit bats in particular carry. It has in the past spread into humans. I think the
00:26first outbreak was about 20 or 30 years ago and since then we've typically seen one or two outbreaks
00:34a year. Most outbreaks start and most transmission events are because of a contact either with an
00:43infected animal or with something that has been contaminated by fruit bats. The early symptoms are
00:51quite non-specific. They could be anything really sort of sore throat, fever, general feeling unwell,
00:58sore eyes, the sort of thing that could be caused by any disease or many different viruses. The thing
01:06that probably kills most is called encephalitis which is an infection and a swelling of the brain
01:12and when you get a encephalitis you start feeling very unwell. In terms of the initial infections,
01:24it's being careful about eating and drinking food that might be contaminated by fruit bats. For the
01:32traveller, if any of us go to these areas, the issue is the sort of things that you're not supposed to do
01:39anyway or you spend is you don't eat fruit without peeling it first. Don't drink unpasteurised or
01:50unheated drinks that have been heated to a temperature that would kill viruses. There's no
01:56vaccine that is currently available although I believe one is in development and there's no specific
02:03treatment so if you do get the infection what we say is that management is supportive in that you
02:12actually try and make keep people alive until they recover on their own rather than giving something
02:17that will kill the virus. Nipah virus doesn't spread too far unlike COVID but if we can hold the spread
02:26we can raise the progress by easy means by maintaining proper hygiene. There is no proper vaccine,
02:33there is no proper medicine, only conservative treatment is available but hygiene is the most important task.
02:40of course we all are afraid of all the viruses especially after corona, everything is going to change and we lost so much people
02:57so we think we should be very careful about these kind of diseases.
03:27you
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