By Sujata Deb

New Delhi, May (UNI) The deadly Nipah Virus has left health officials in the country flummoxed and desperate to search for an antidote to tackle it.
India, which has seen its share of fatal viruses in recent years, is now grappling with the killer disease that has already claimed 13 lives since its outbreak in Kerala's Kozhikode district.
Indian health officials have reached out to the Australian government for an antibody to "neutralise" the virus,
and is hopeful about the antibody, though the catch is that it has not been tested on humans so far.
While the medical profession over the past century has successfully tamed diseases that were once considered
incurable, it is now progressively seeing bouts of infectious diseases that are resistant to drugs and whose number is growing.
Consider the case of the US, where more than 10 new human diseases have surfaced since the late 1980s. From the tick-borne virus in Kansas in 2014, a new variant of leprosy at Arizona in 2002 and a never-seen-before haemorrhagic fever passed on by rodents to humans and killing three in California in 1999 among others, newer viruses have been surfacing every few years.
Worryingly, many of these viruses originated among animals before being passed on to humans in their full virulent form.
According to the Health ministry officials, what is a matter of concern is that though so far the 13 deaths reported have been localised in Kerala -- nine people died in Kozhikode district and three in Mallappuram -- there are reports of dead bats being found in the premises of a government school in Himachal Pradesh, prompting officials to send samples for testing to NIV, Pune, on the cause of death.
This is not the first time that focus has shifted to the role of bats, the carriers of the latest Nipah Virus.
Regarded as among the most dangerous animals in the world, they have played a role in triggering the dreaded
Ebola outbreak in West Africa, in the SARS pandemic of killer pneumonia in 2003, and now the fatal Nipah.
But these flying animals, who can transport the Nipah Virus in their spit, blood and even feaces and even across borders, the difficult option could be to eliminate these bats.
Along with mosquitoes, the bats are now being regarded with suspicion as the source of recent viral outbreaks.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of diseases transmitted from mosquitoes, ticks and fleas has more than tripled since 2004, as can be seen in the outbreak of Chikungunya virus on the home front and the Zika virus in Brazil recently.
Factors as diverse as international travel and climate change are responsible for the spread of these viruses across the globe, say researchers.
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