Meet The Hero At The Forefront Of Battling Nipah Virus

Brut India spoke to Dr Govindakarnavar Arunkumar, the doctor who first detected the Nipah outbreak in India.

Transcript

00:00The

00:22speciality is that the brother of that encephalitis case had passed away with similar illness

00:30a week back and two more family members are admitted with early symptoms of encephalitis.

00:43So immediately I directed him to send various type of clinical samples to our laboratory.

00:59Because it's of an international concern virus, we wanted it to be doubly sure.

01:04On 18th evening itself, the Kerala health services, the central health services and

01:10you know this hospital or the treating clinician were made aware that they are dealing with

01:18a highly infectious rare viral disease.

01:34So that is the time we realized that there were other patients getting admitted to medical

01:41college.

01:42These patients are basically the contacts of this first case which was never diagnosed.

01:55So the transmission chances are very high when the patient is really sick.

02:00So the immediate thing or what I was discussing with the health services is to isolate the

02:08patients and contain further spread.