The Nipah virus (NiV) is a zoonotic pathogen that belongs to risk group 4 [1,2,3]. Fruit bats from the genus Pteropus are its natural reservoir, and spillover to the human population usually occurs through a medium, i.e., infected animals or food items contaminated with the virus [1,3,4,5,6]. NiV, one of the fatal emerging pathogens of our time, was first detected in the Malaysia–Singapore region in 1998, which sparked a devastating pandemic [1]. Hence, the virus is named after Kampung Sungai Nipah in Malaysia [4]. In Bangladesh, the virus was first reported in 2001, and since then, the NiV has become endemic to this densely populated country, with confirmed cases reported almost every year [3,7,8,9]. An alarming feature regarding disease transmission was the evidence of person-to-person transmission [4,7,9,10,11,12]. The virus usually causes respiratory infection followed by infection of the central nervous system [1,13]. The clinical presentation of human Nipah infection includes sudden onset fever, cough, respiratory distress, altered mental status, convulsion, and coma [1,2,8,9]. According to the available scientific evidence, two out of three infected individuals died during the infection [1,8,9]. Till 2021, 321 cases of NiV infection has been detected and only 96 of them survived the initial period of infectivity [14]. There are 85 NiV infection survivors in Bangladesh as of July 2021, according to an unpublished article entitled “A 16-year story of tackling a global epidemic threat: Nipah surveillance in Bangladesh, 2006–2021”. Since its emergence, infection was confirmed through ELISA for IgM and IgG against NiV and RT-PCR to detect viral nucleic acid [1,4,5,8,9]. Considering its public health risk and the level of panic it created in the community, in 2006 Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) and icddr,b jointly introduced the national Nipah surveillance in Bangladesh, with technical support from US CDC, Atlanta [5,7]. This initiative enabled the authority to identify and confirm NiV infection at the earliest, facilitate the implementation of mitigation measures to prevent disease transmission, as well as to conduct routine follow up of NiV infection survivors. The purpose of survivor follow-up was to monitor changes in disease sequelae and progression of immunological characteristics and to detect events of relapse/recrudescence at the earliest.Human NiV infection is known for its rapid progression and high fatality. Thus, exploring virus–human interaction from an immunological perspective has been challenging. The minimum available scientific evidence suggest the presence of NiV RNA in blood and throat/oro-pharyngeal swab samples during the course of infection as well as the development and persistence of humoral immunity (Anti Nipah IgM and IgG) [15,16]. Currently, no vaccine or therapeutics are available to prevent or treat this disease. Several potential vaccines are in the pipeline, and immunological evidence from NiV infection survivors lays the foundation for this effort [1,4].

During routine follow-up, novel evidence of the transfer of immune properties from a survivor to her offspring was identified. This article elaborates on this newly found data and its implications on our understanding of immunity against NiV infection, passive transfer of immune properties, and future disease prevention efforts, especially vaccine development.