Is there any link between the Nipah outbreak and the farmers engaged in exotic fruit cultivation such as rambutan?
Farmers in hilly regions fear that the demand for fruits in northern India may be hit by rumours that the boy who succumbed to Nipah in Kozhikode had reportedly consumed a bat-bitten rambutan fruit.
Though the harvest of exotic fruits is over in the plains, it has just begun in hilly areas such as Wayanad and Idukki. Many farmers took to fruit cultivation after issues with cash cropssuch as pepper and a fall in price of rubber, coffee, and tea.
More than 5,000 farmers in Wayanad are cultivating exotic fruits such as rambutan, pulasan, mangosteen, avocado, dragon fruit, and litchi in over 6,000 acres.
“We get a sustainable income as fruits are available only in the high ranges during the period,” says Kuruvila Joseph, 69, a progressive planter at Meppadi.
“I have been cultivating rambutan for the past 30 years but, I could not see a bat bite on the fruit, thanks to its thorny skin,” he says.
Many farmers sell their produce through supermarkets in the metros.
“We got many enquiries from Haryana and Delhi after rumuors spreading through media,” says Sartov Joseph, a farmer at Rippon.
The price of rambutan rose from ₹170 a kg to ₹250 recently in the Kerala market after the harvest got over in the plains.
Rumours of a litchi virus, associated with the death of a few children in West Bengal a couple of years ago, had hit sales in the metros leading to a fall in prices then, he says.
Such panic and irrational reactions should end as stopping fruit procurement or not eating rambutan is not going to prevent Nipah, says P.O. Nameer, Dean, College of Climate Change and Environmental Science, KAU, Thrissur.
“Fruit bats are found in all parts of the State and across the country and we have coexisted with them for millions of years. We have always known that these bats are natural reservoirs of several viruses, including Nipah virus. But why this spillover of these viruses to humans has happened in Kerala or its timing are subjects which need close study. In the case of Kerala outbreaks, it has still not been scientifically established that the virus jumped from bats to humans and that it is through the consumption of fruits which were possibly contaminated by bat saliva. It is only a premise, beyond which we have nothing to go on as of now,” says Dr. Nameer.
“In a State where non-communicable diseases kill people every day, much more than Nipah will ever do, stopping the consumption of fruits because of Nipah scare is going to do more harm than good. Fruits are an essential part of a healthy diet and avoiding rambutan or any other fruit is not the cure for Nipah,” says T.S. Anish, a public health expert.
He says there is no proof linking eating of rambutan to the death of the 12-year-old who succumbed to Nipah.
“People need to be careful not to consume fruits lying on the ground beneath the fruit tree or which have bite or peck marks as these might have been bitten by bats or birds. In the context of increasing emergence of zoonotic diseases, it is a general precaution we need to follow. Fruits are safe to consume if washed well and their skin is removed,” says Dr. Anish.
