NiV crossing traditional belt, seasons

Syed Fattahul Alim | Published: February 09, 2026 21:47:50

A woman aged between 40 and 50 died of Nipah Virus (NiV) infection in the northern district of Naogaon, according to WHO Disease Outbreak News. As reported, the woman developed symptoms of NiV infection which included fever, headache, muscle cramp, loss of appetite, weakness and vomiting followed by hypersalivation, disorientation and convulsions. The patient died on January 28, the same day she was admitted to hospital. She was learnt to have drunk raw date juice or sap. Notably, fruit bats (Pteropus), hosts of NiV, contaminate pots containing date palm juice hanging from the date palm trees. Traditionally, a sap collector, also called tapper (gachhi in Bengali), shaves date tree trunks at a high altitude to extract sap and collect it in earthen pots overnight. Fruit bats lick the same sap from the date palm tree at night and thus contaminate the sap with their saliva. They may also urinate in the sap to contaminate it with NiV.
This is how the zoonotic NiV travels from bats to humans. The woman of Naogaon reportedly drank date palm juice several times and contracted NiV. In the winter season that is normal among the people in the northern, central and western districts of Bangladesh where large numbers of the date palm trees grow. So, those districts are usually home to date juice licking bats. Going by past records, it is between December and April that NiV infection cases are usually reported. So, the Naogaon case of a NiV-related death falls in the usual pattern. But last year (2025) in August, a NiV-infected child patient died in the same district under Rajshahi division. So, this is an off-season case of NiV-related fatality. It is not clear how the child contracted the disease. Some four NiV-infected patients reportedly died last year (2025). As reports go, since 2001, when the first case of NiV infection was reported, there have been 348 NiV cases and 250 cases of death recorded so far. That amounts to about 72 per cent fatality rate. The record also has it that 50 per cent of the deaths were caused by drinking raw date palm sap or its fermented version called toddy (tari in Bengali), while 29 per cent of the victims contracted the virus through personal contacts. Recently, in addition to the primary route of raw date palm sap, NiV transmission through fruits like mango, blackberry etc., have also been reported. Such NiV transmission through an alternative route might happen when someone unknowingly eats any fruit bitten by fruit bat.
Meanwhile, NiV has also widened its geographical spread from the traditional belt of central and northwestern regions to some 35 out of 64 districts out of the country. That means the virus has now grown the tendency to cross its traditional geographical belt, routes and seasons of transmission. Despite the fact that the number of deaths from NiV-infection so far are not so high, yet considering the very high fatality rate (in most recorded cases, close to 100 per cent) of NiV cases, the infection's trend should ring alarm bells among the healthcare authorities concerned. The bad news is that there is no known drug to treat NiV-infected patients, neither is there any vaccine to prevent NiV infection. So, the government's health department, especially the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) should make special arrangements to deal with the NiV cases. Since this deadly virus can spread from one individual to another through close contact with infected person's bodily fluids such as saliva, urine, blood, etc., extreme care needs to be taken to isolate the afflicted persons both within their households and in the hospitals. Diagnosis of the infection using the gold standard of 'RT-PCR' should be done to detect the active virus in the throat and nasal swab, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), urine and blood samples of patients in the early stage of the infection.

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