Warning to bat eaters

The Star 27 May 10;

KUALA LUMPUR: The Nipah epidemic may be under control but exotic food lovers have been advised to be careful when eating bat meat.

People who catch, kill and clean bats must take precautions to protect themselves from being infected by the Nipah virus, said Prof Dr Tan Chong Tin, the leader of the Nipah Encephalitis Investigating Team during the 1998/99 outbreak.

“They also need to be careful because bats are believed to transmit the SARS virus,” he said during his Merdeka Award Lecture Series “The Saga of Nipah Encephalitis: An Update” yesterday.

Asked if eating bat meat could pose a danger, he said that should not be a problem if it was properly cooked.

However, Dr Tan, said he would not want to create an anti-bats sentiment because bats had a positive ecological contribution.

Bats are also believed to benefit those suffering from asthma. According to an online website, a community in Thailand eats the meat believing it to be good for the libido.

Dr Tan said that the Nipah virus was still a global concern because it had been discovered in many areas of the world like Ghana, Madagascar, India, China and various parts of South East Asia and Australia.

Asked if the virus can still be found in Malaysia, Dr Tan said this was not known because no tests had been carried out since the 1998/99 outbreak.

The outbreak began in vilages near Ipoh and took more than 100 lives.

Nipah still plagues some
Lydia Gomez New Straits Times 27 May 10;

KUALA LUMPUR: The Nipah virus, whose outbreak in 1999 took more than 100 lives and caused the mass culling of almost a million pigs, has recurred in about 10 per cent of its survivors.

Although another outbreak was highly unlikely in Malaysia, this recurrent pattern had been identified over the past 10 years in small villages in India and Bangladesh, said Professor Dr Tan Chong Tin, who led the 15-member team that identified the Nipah virus when it first appeared.

Dr Tan was the joint recipient of the Merdeka Award in the health, science and technology category in 2008 for his work in discovering the new virus and the follow-up study on it.

"We found that the Nipah virus was able to hide in the brain until it was aggravated by certain factors in the environment," he said in his lecture on the update of the Nipah encephalitis at the International Medical University here yesterday.

He said Malaysians had no reason to be alarmed about this because the condition happened to only 300 people who were affected by the virus.

"But this does give us another chance to study the virus and contribute to medical knowledge. It usually reappears within five to six years," Dr Tan said after delivering the talk, which was part of the Merdeka Award lecture series organised by the Merdeka Award Secretariat and Universiti Teknologi Petronas.

The virus, named after Kampung Sungai Nipah, Perak, was found to have originated from fruitbats that used an orchard near a pig farm as their habitat.

The pigs became infected and the virus spread to humans who came in close contact with the animals, mainly pig farmers and their family members.

The Health Ministry had ordered all pigs to be culled, including those in Bukit Pelanduk, Negri Sembilan that were affected by Japanese encephalitis. This resulted in hundreds of pig farmers losing their livelihood.

Dr Tan said most of the Nipah virus survivors did not have medical complications but some had complained of symptoms that indicated they were psychologically affected by the outbreak.

"These were people who earned a lot and lived an easy life. Suddenly, they had to do all kinds of jobs to supplement their income. Some had to plant oil palm trees instead."

He advised those who handled bats to take extra precaution as bats had been known to spread other viruses, including Ebola and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that caused panic in the country in 2003.

"There are more cases in Bangladesh because the people there co-habit with the bats. So, pig farmers are advised to keep their farms far from orchards to prevent infection."

However, there was much left to be discovered about the Nipah virus, Dr Tan said, adding that a general research culture should be instilled among youngsters so that the knowledge could be passed down.

"There should be more research not just on Nipah but also on other diseases. We have to develop a research culture among the youth so that they don't do science just to earn money."

Since Dr Tan and his team discovered the virus more than 10 years ago, research has been conducted in various countries, including Ghana, Madagascar, India, China, Thailand, Cambodia and Australia.