But Nordin says the government doesn't believe the current level of pig smuggling between Malaysia and Thailand is extensive enough to be a health problem. Other fruit bats may also carry Nipah, though that remains to be proved. Research points strongly to a combination of environmental destruction and intensive pig breeding as the root causes of the outbreak of Nipah last year. Chillingly, in the course of their research the Malaysian scientists also discovered two previously unknown, so-far dormant viruses that are very similar to Nipah. Calisher, who teaches microbiology at Colorado State University in the United States, notes that the virus could already be present in other bat populations outside Malaysia.
Fruit bats are widespread, their habitat stretching all the way to Africa and China.
In Thailand, pork is the primary source of meat, as it is in Taiwan and China, which has nearly one billion pigs on its farms. Scientists like Calisher advocate greater international cooperation to monitor emerging diseases like Nipah, particularly in what Lam at the University of Malaya calls the epicentre of the phenomenon, the Asia-Pacific region. Lam points out that help from the U.S. Centres for Disease Control was critical in helping identify the Nipah virus. Aziz believes that the research efforts being conducted at his institute and at the country's universities need an infusion of between 10 and 15 million ringgit in government funding. Malaysian government officials like Nordin retort that the lack of qualified scientists to do the research is the main problem, not funding.