A pig‐borne virus causing viral encephalitis amongst human beings in Malaysia was detected in 1997 by the Ministry of Health. Initially, the disease was considered to be Japanese encephalitis. Subsequently, it was thought to be a Hendra‐like viral encephalitis, but on 10th April, 1999 the Minister of Health announced this mysterious and deadly virus to be a new virus named Nipah virus. The virus was characterized at CDC, Atlanta, Georgia. The gene sequencing of the enveloped virus revealed that one of the genes had 21% difference in the nucleotide sequence with about 8% difference in the amino acid sequence from Hendra virus isolated from horses in Australia in 1994. The virus was named after the village Nipah. In all, the Ministry of Health declared 101 human casualties, and 900,000 pigs were culled by April, 1999. The worst affected area in Malaysia was Negri Sembilan. The symptoms, incubation period in human being and pigs, animal to human transmission, threat of disease to other livestock, and control program adopted in Malaysia is described.

PLATES LXV-LXVIIE A R L Y electron-microscope studies of metal-shadowed preparations of avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) revealed that the virus particle had a diameter of 60-120 nm (Reagan et al., 1948;Reagan and Brueckner, 1952). Later, negative staining showed it to differ from Newcastle disease virus in having less densely packed and more loosely attached surface projections that gave a strawberry-like appearance (Chu, 1964). Berry et al. (1964) confirmed that the projections of IBV are morphologically distinct from those of the myxoviruses, and reported that the diameter of the virus particle was 80-120 nm. Domermuth and Edwards (1957) examined ultrathin sections of IBV-infected chorio-allantoic membranes and observed intracytoplasmic particles having a doughnut-like appearance and measuring 178-200 nm in diameter. Viruses isolated from the respiratory tracts of persons with common colds have been described as " avian infectious bronchitislike " on account of their morphology in negatively stained preparations (Almeida and Tyrrell, 1967). However, differences in internal structure have been reported between the avian and human viruses present in ultrathin sections of infected chorio-allantoic membrane and human embryo kidney tissue culture cells respectively .

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Summary Processing of nasal materials from clinical cases during the 1987 influenza epidemic in Northern and Central India resulted in the isolation of two haemagglutinating agents; one each from donkeys and horses at Bhiwani in Haryana State and Ludhiana in Punjab State, respectively. These were typed as Influenza A/Equi‐2 viruses by haemagglutination inhibition test. The two isolates were designated as A/Equi‐2/Bhiwani/1/87 and A/Equi‐2/Ludhiana/1/87. The Bhiwani/87 isolate was confirmed to have H3N8 antigenic structure and was indistinguishable from the Miami/63 strain of A/Equi‐2 virus. However, the A/Equi‐2 Ludhiana/87 isolate was closely related to the Fontainebleau/79 strain of A/equi‐2 virus.