Death toll in the recent spate of encephalitis rose to 147 when three more children died of this dreaded disease during the past 24 hour. Officials say all the deaths are reported from BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur.
Official sources on Sunday said that of the three fresh deaths one each were from Basti and Gorakhpur while one was from adjoining Bihar state. “All the dead were children in the age group of 5 yo 15 years,” the official told The Pioneer.
Baba Raghav Das Medical College Superintendent Dr. N N Shukla said that since January last 693 children suffering from encephalitis were admitted to the Baba Raghav Das Medical College here of which 147 died.
Of the patients admitted to the hospital suffering from encephalitis belonged to the districts of Gorakhpur, Deoria, Gonda, Basti, Sidharthnagar,Sankabrinagar,Kushinagar, Balrampur, Ghazipur,Azamgarh along with some patients from Nepal and Bihar.
The area is endemic for Japanese Encephalitis but in the past six years, children have been dying of other forms of viral encephalitis, the exact cause of which is unclear. One possibility is a water-borne virus present in contaminated water, doctors say.
The diseases cause head aches and vomiting and can lead to comas, brain dysfunctions, seizures and inflammations of the heart and kidney.
Doctors say children between the age of six months to 15 years are worst affected and most of the victims are poor people from rural areas.
With this disease taking endemic proposition taking lives of children every years Convener of the National Encephalitis Eradication Program (NEEP) Dr R.N. Singh has written a letter to prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting him to declareencephalitis eradication programme as national programme.
“The need of the hour is to make encephalitis eradication programme as a national programme. The Issue has been raised more than 20 times in lok Sabha by M.P from Gorakhpur Yogi Aditanath. A National Program for Prevention and Control ofEncephalitis was made twice - first in 2011 and then in 2014 again. But it is very unfortunate that it yet to come out of the drawing board,” he wrote in his letter, which was released to the media on Sunday.
He said the disease is 100 Preventable but do not have any specific treatment. Till now Government’s major stress has been on treatment part only but what is important is that Government should look after the prevention part too.
“Many countries have almost eradicated it where it was a major problem. Some decades back countries like China, Japan and Korea were ravaged by encephalitis. Now these countries are encephalitis free. If these countries can do it we can also do it,” he said.
The disease is predictable and preventable. The annual monsoon fills parched paddy fields, which bear the mosquitoes that spread Japanese encephalitis from pigs to humans, devastating malnourished children with low immunity. Another strain of the disease — acute encephalitis syndrome — spreads through contaminated water. Residents defecate in the fields, contaminating the ground water.
A vaccine has long been available, but the state government — which spent tens of crores of rupees building monuments — has failed to muster the sustained political will to focus on the communities hardest hit by the illness.
The disease killed more than 1,500 children in 2005, the worst recent year, In 2006 a vaccination drive was launched. The government vowed to immunize every child in the worst-affected areas and to launch a massive drive to improve sanitation. For a couple of years, the numbers dropped. In 2006, the disease killed 431 children.