India’s encephalitis toll 850, worst may be over
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India’s deadliest encephalitis outbreak in almost three decades, which has killed 850 people in a northern state, has started to wane with fewer deaths being reported, a health official said on Tuesday.
“We can now safely assume that the worst is over,” said Uttar Pradesh health services chief O.P. Singh.
“Though the virus would continue to remain there until the middle of October, it is likely to turn less virulent,” he said.
But his optimism is likely to ring hollow for hundreds of parents whose children have died from encephalitis or been left disabled by an illness that affects the brain. Symptoms include headaches, convulsions, high fever and coma.
Singh said 85 percent of those who had died were children aged between 3 and 15 years. The disease has also killed at least 204 people in neighboring Nepal this summer.
Authorities in Uttar Pradesh have been severely criticized for their lax response to the outbreak, which began in July.
Hospitals and medical staff were quickly overwhelmed by the flow of patients and a number of comatose children had to lie two to a bed. Many parents watched helpless as their children died.
Dozens of extra doctors and health workers have now been sent to the state’s badly affected eastern districts.
The encephalitis virus is found in pigs and wild birds and is spread to humans by mosquitoes. The disease is most prevalent during the monsoon.
Many of the afflicted children were from poor rural families who reared pigs or lived in villages where pigs were kept.
Singh said 10 new deaths were reported over the past 24 hours but the number was less than the average daily death toll of 15-20 over a week ago.
Officials also said the number of patients reporting to hospitals—including the medical college in Gorakhpur district that has been the epicenter of the outbreak—has fallen from 40 to 60 per day earlier this month to 20 to 30 in the past three days.
At the peak of the outbreak in late August and early September, hundreds of parents were bringing their sick children to poorly equipped state-run hospitals.
There have been smaller outbreaks in Uttar Pradesh over the past 27 years during the monsoon season where stagnant water allows mosquitoes to breed but authorities have not carried out large-scale preventive vaccination programs.
Singh said this would change next year because officials planned to immunize at least 7.5 million children in the state.
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