Climate Change Likely to Expand the Range of an Asian Bat and the Deadly Disease it Carries

On May 3, 2018, a 26-year-old man living in the town of Perambra in the Indian state of Kerala went to the hospital complaining of fever and body aches. Muhammad Sabith’s symptoms did not seem serious enough for an overnight stay, so hospital staff sent him home after examining him. Two days later, he died. By the end of the month, 16 other people in Perambra had succumbed to the same illness—Nipah virus, spread by fruit bats throughout South and Southeast Asia.

The virus, though deadly, is rare. In Bangladesh, where cultural practices bring people into contact with bats carrying the virus, less than 350 Nipah cases have been recorded since 2001, said Clifton McKee, an epidemiology researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. But this rarity doesn’t make it