The dreaded Japanese encephalitis threatened to take epidemic proportions in North Bengal with Siliguri and Jalpaiguri recording 48 deaths in the past three days taking the toll to 108, State Health Department sources said amid complaints of suppressing of reports by the powers that be.
Unofficial sources said the death toll was “much more than what is being presented by the Government.” State Director for Medical Health Education Dr Susanta Banerjee said the toll “could be around 102.”
While Banerjee hoped that the ‘ferocity of the disease would come down gradually’, there were hardly any sign of the infection going down. Tended only to aggravate since Sunday till when the death toll was 60.
While between 1st July and 20th July, Jalpaiguri and Siliguri regions saw 60 deaths additional 48 people died after that, State Opposition leader Suryakanto Mishra said alleging “there is a clear case of suppression of facts. There could be many more deaths than what is being reported.”
BJP MP Babul Supriyo said Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who was also handling the Health Department “should postpone her visit to Singapore from where she will reportedly bring investment and go to North Bengal instead.”
While Health Department officials requesting anonimity said there could be 350 people still suffering from the disease complaining lack of infrastructural facilities, other sources put the figure to more than 500 as more reports of infections were coming in from places like Dhupguri, Maynaguri, places which have large number of piggeries.
Such was the lack of infrastructural facilities that the patients struck by the disease had to be accommodated with the general patients at North Bengal Medical College Hospital in Siliguri. Doctors said chances of the disease spreading to neighbouring Bihar or South Bengal were remote.
“High alert has been sounded in seven North Bengal districts of Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Darjeeling, North Dinajour, South Dinajpur and Malda” Banerjee said.
The State Government had requested the Centre to rush in aid, Health officials said. “It is quite an alarming situation,” said B Satapathy, State Health Services Director.
“Why shall a Government have to learn lessons after killing so many people. They did so in 2012 when Dengue and Malaria struck the State killing hundreds of people now they have done in case of Encephelaitis” the Opposition leader, himself a doctor and a former Health Minister said adding, “the Government should have taken precautionary measures from the beginning.”
Instead of doing so “they were engaged in attacking the Opposition workers,” Mishra said wondering “why the Chief Minister who was in North Bengal even a few days ago did not come to the hospitals to see things for herself.”