The World Health Organisation says the nipah disease spreading through a state in southwest India could cause a global epidemic.
Emergency measures have been imposed across the southwestern state of Kerala following the emergence of the nipah virus, which causes flu-like symptoms leading to an agonising brain-swelling condition known as encephalitis.
Those afflicted by the disease, which has a mortality rate of 70% and has no vaccine, can also be sent in to a coma.
Health experts have been flown over to help contain the virus, which is listed alongside ebola and zika as one of eight priority diseases the World Health Organisation believes could cause a global epidemic.
Nipah has killed 260 people in Malaysia, Bangladesh and India since 1998, and has previously spread to Singapore.
Pigs were the host on that occasion, but this time it has been spread by fruit bats, with a number of the winged animals found dead in a well at the home of a family which has lost four people to the disease.