From Van to Village: Rapid Nipah Testing Arrives: News From IDWeek 2025

At IDWeek 2025, held in Atlanta, Georgia, from October 19 to 22, Mohammed Enayet Hossain, PhD, of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, unveiled a major advance in outbreak readiness: a rapid, portable diagnostic tool for Nipah virus designed specifically for low-resource settings. “My poster is about developing a rapid diagnostic tool for detection of Nipah virus in respiratory illness patients,” he explained. With a case-fatality rate “more than 70%,” Nipah remains one of the most dangerous zoonotic infections in South Asia.

A major challenge, Mohammed emphasized, is the absence of a point-of-care test. “Currently, there is a problem…there is no rapid diagnostic system that can be put in the point-of-care area.” His team set out to change that by building a mobile laboratory that can be deployed directly to rural and peripheral hospitals. “Our goal was to set a laboratory that can be transported to the peripheral hospitals, where it can be diagnosed within half an hour.”

The resulting system is strikingly simple to use in the field: “It can be put in a mobile suitcase laboratory and can be easily carried in the back of a van and taken to the area where it can provide diagnostics.” Early evaluations have shown strong performance. “Right now, what we have found is [that it’s] working very fine. We compared [it] with the gold standard…real-time RT-PCR assay, and it works very fine in detecting the acute cases of Nipah virus infection.”

The potential public-health impact is substantial. According to Mohammed, “This point-of-care diagnostics can change the way…we can use it for control and infection control of this disease.” The key advantages are clear: “The accuracy and the time and the portability” of the system allow it to be taken “to any rural place…in a low-resource setting” to diagnose, isolate, and prevent spread of a virus that has long eluded rapid detection.