Second Indian state reports Nipah cases

Cholera kills 12 in Nigeria

DUBAI, May 23, (Agencies): Bahrain has asked its nationals to avoid travelling to India’s Kerala until an outbreak of the rare Nipah virus, spread by fruit bats, is under control, the Gulf state’s consulate in Mumbai said on its Twitter account on Wednesday.

The virus can cause flu-like symptoms and brain damage, and the outbreak has already killed 10 people in southern India, with at least nine more being treated, officials said.

Indian health officials were checking on Wednesday if a rare, brain-damaging virus had spread to a second state after two suspected cases reported in southern Karnataka, as the death toll in adjacent Kerala, where the outbreak began, rose to 11.

The world’s second most populous country suffers hundreds of deaths from infectious diseases every year because of weak disease surveillance and infection control systems, leading health experts to worry about the risks of such outbreaks.

There is no vaccine for the Nipah virus, carried by fruit bats and spread through contact with bodily fluids, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. Treatment for the virus, which has a mortality rate of about 70 percent, is supportive care.

Symptoms of the virus surfaced in a 20-year-old woman and a 75-yearold man in the port city of Mangalore after they travelled to neighbouring Kerala and had contact with infected patients, said Rajesh B.V., a health official in Karnataka.

“They are not confirmed Nipah cases yet, so there is no need to panic,” he said by telephone. “The situation is under control.”

The patients are being treated and samples of their blood have been sent for screening, with results expected by Thursday, he added.

Health officials investigating the outbreak in Kerala, where the first death happened on Friday, have traced it to a well infested with bats from which the victims drew water.

Human-to-human transmission of the virus has been recorded in previous outbreaks in India that killed as many as 50 people.

Travel to Kerala, a popular tourist destination, was declared safe by Rajeev Sadanandan, a state health official, who said the outbreak “remains highly localised”, with all cases linked to one family.

He declined to comment on the Mangalore cases, but identified the districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Malappuram and Wayanad for tourists in Kerala to avoid, as being close to the outbreak and under scrutiny by health officials.

“Since there are many foreigners who travel to Kerala, we are advising they can avoid these districts for abundant caution,” he told Reuters.

A nurse who treated three of the Kerala victims succumbed to the infection on Monday, Health Minister K.K. Shailaja told a news briefing, where she announced payment of compensation to her family and others who lost family members to the infection.

At least 17 patients are under treatment, Shailaja added.

“All steps to prevent the spread of the virus have been taken,” she added, urging people not to destroy colonies of fruit bats.

ABUJA:

Also:

A cholera outbreak has killed 12 people and may have infected at least 134 others in the northeast Nigerian state of Adamawa, a medical official said on Wednesday.

“So far 12 people have died from the disease and there are many more cases”, said Ezra Sakawa, medical director of the general hospital for Mubi, the town where the disease has struck.

“We have little manpower to deal with an outbreak of such magnitude,” Sakawa said, adding that nurses were on strike.

Northeast Nigeria is ground zero for Nigeria’s nine-year war against Islamist insurgency Boko Haram and its offshoot, now Islamic State’s West Africa ally.

The conflict has spawned one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with millions of people displaced and in need of aid to survive.

GENEVA:

African health authorities said Tuesday they are preparing to send anthropologists to Democratic Republic of Congo to ensure a vaccination campaign against a deadly Ebola outbreak runs smoothly.

“If we do not handle communication well, the vaccination programme may suffer,” John Nkengasong, head of Africa Centres for Disease Control (Africa CDC), told reporters in Geneva.

“So we are also assessing how in the next two weeks or so to deploy anthropologists to support the vaccine efforts,” he said.