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Abstract

The natural reservoir of Hendra and Nipah virus are fruit bats of the genus Pteropus. In Queensland Australia several people were infected with Hendra virus after close contact with Hendra virus infected horses. In the large outbreak in Malaysia, where Nipah virus (NiV) was first identified, most human infections resulted from close contact with NiV infected pigs. Outbreak investigations in Bangladesh implicate drinking raw date palm sap as the most common pathway of NiV transmission from Pteropus bats to people, but person-to-person transmission of NiV has also been repeatedly identified in Bangladesh and India. While henipaviruses are not easily transmitted to people, since most people known to be infected with these viruses die, and some strains are already capable of limited person-to-person transmission, these RNA viruses warrant continued surveillance and scientific attention.

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Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful for the collaboration from Professor Mahmudur Rahman and the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research of the Government of Bangladesh to support the surveillance and investigation of human Nipah virus investigation in Bangladesh, the National Institutes of Health (07-015-0712-52200), The National Science Foundation/National Institutes of Health Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases grant number 2R01-TW005869 from the Fogarty International Center and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Cooperative Agreement 5U01CI000628) who have funded the Bangladesh investigations, and the many local collaborators who conducted the investigations. Sonia Hegde and Hossain Sazzad analyzed the data for Fig. 4.1. Md. Kamal Hossain constructed Fig. 4.2. The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Luby, S., Gurley, E. (2015). Epidemiology of Henipaviruses. In: Shapshak, P., Sinnott, J., Somboonwit, C., Kuhn, J. (eds) Global Virology I - Identifying and Investigating Viral Diseases. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2410-3_4

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