Low-tech approach stifles high-risk Nipah virus
Shielding palm-tree sap from fruit bats may limit spread of deadly disease
By Nathan Seppa
WASHINGTON — Simple bamboo skirts attached to date palms can protect the trees’ tasty sap from contamination by fruit bats. In so doing, the low-tech devices may prevent the spread of lethal Nipah virus, researchers in Bangladesh report at a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
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Nipah virus is a relatively new pathogen that was first identified in 1999. The virus can spread from person to person but is more likely to pass from an animal to a person. Fruit bats — known as flying foxes and common in Southeast Asia — can carry the virus without being sickened by it.
“This is basically a bat virus that occasionally spills over into other animals, including Homo sapiens,” says study coauthor Stephen Luby, a physician at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh in Dhaka.