advisory<\/a> issued by the NIH on October 7, six NiV cases were reported in the Indian state in September this year and the virus resulted in two deaths.<\/p>\n\u201cPreviously countries including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and India have also reported confirmed cases of Nipah virus in human. Although Nipah virus has caused only a few known outbreaks in Asia, it infects a wide range of animals and causes severe disease and death in people, making it a public health concern,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Talking about Pakistan, the advisory said the overall risk of disease occurrence in the country was low and to date there was no report of documented animal or human cases of the infection.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, there are several factors which could allow NiV emergence in Pakistan like evidences of the presence of Pteropus giganteus species of bats, international travel and long border with India where NiV outbreak has been documented,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The NIH also highlighted a number of precautionary measures that can be taken by authorities to prevent the occurrence of NiV in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cRaising awareness about the risk factors and mitigating measures are key to reducing the risk of NiV exposure and transmission. The present options to prevent secondary transmissions are active case finding, contact tracing, isolation and quarantine of cases and their contacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cCommunity awareness regarding consumption of fruits only after proper washing and avoiding ingestion of partly consumed fruits which may be contaminated with secretions from fruit bats,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
The advisory further stated that health care professionals should be aware of the signs and symptoms of the virus, obtain travel history when assessing patients, practice \u201cstandard infection control precautions\u201d and share suspected NiV case samples with the NIH.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor early detection and implementation of preventive and control measures, the federal and provincial\/regional health departments, points of entries (especially the airports under the Border Health Services), hospitals, clinicians and laboratory personals (public and private) and livestock and dairy departments are required to stay vigilant and notify the health authorities about any suspected case\/event of NiV as per WHO case definition,\u201d it said, adding that the NIH was closely monitoring the situation.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The National Institute of Health has said the risk of occurrence of Nipah virus (NiV) in Pakistan is low. However, it has urged authorities at entry points across the country to remain vigilant. The virus, according to the World Health Organisation, was first recognised in 1999 during an outbreak among pig farmers in Malaysia. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2023\/10\/081919455622d09.jpg?r=192237","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pakistan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}