Outbreak of Nipah-like virus kills 14 in Bangladesh: WHO

0 Comments | AFP, February, 2004

GENEVA (AFP) — Fourteen people have died in western Bangladesh from an outbreak of a viral infection which resembles the deadly Nipah virus, the World Health Organisation said.

Tests by the US Center for Disease Control have so far confirmed "Nipah-like virus" in nine of the 42 cases which were first reported on January 4, WHO said in a statement Friday.

The infection was found in two provinces, Manikganj and Rajbari, and another 45 suspected cases are being investigated, it added.

Nipah, which induces flu-like symptoms that often lead to encephalitis and a coma, jumped the species barrier from fruit bats to pigs and then to humans in Malaysia in October 1998.

Experts from the United States and France were helping Bangladesh authorities with the...