Indian state caught napping by deadly disease
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India’s most serious outbreak of encephalitis in three decades, which has killed 750 people and infected thousands in the past two months, could have been prevented if authorities had stuck to an immunisation programme, experts said.
While neighbouring China has drastically cut its infection rate of Japanese encephalitis through mass vaccination programmes, India, which has suffered smaller outbreaks for decades, has consistently ignored it.
Last year, only 400,000 children out of 7.5 million were vaccinated against encephalitis in the most populous Uttar Pradesh state, which has taken the brunt of the disease.
“For many years, the public health situation in Uttar Pradesh has been completely eroded,” Alok Mukhopadhyay, head of the Voluntary Health Association of India, said. “We always have a firefighting response.”
India which spends a paltry 0.9 percent of GDP on healthcare has been more pre-occupied with AIDS, tuberculosis and polio in recent years than encephalitis. The 750 or so victims this year have been mostly children from poor families, experts said.
Encephalitis is caused by a virus found in pigs and is spread by mosquitoes. It affects the brain and symptoms include high fever, severe headaches and convulsions and it can lead to paralysis, coma and death.
This year, the problem was compounded after annual monsoon rains broke early allowing mosquitoes to breed in large numbers. The authorities in Uttar Pradesh were caught off-guard as the first cases of the disease started arriving after the rains in June, a month ahead of schedule, a state health official said.
“Medical authorities were not prepared for such an early rise in the number of cases,” regional health services chief O.P. Singh told Reuters.
With about 3,000 cases officially reported, the outbreak is the most serious in India in nearly three decades.
The early onset of the disease also meant hospitals were ill-equipped to deal with the crisis. In a government hospital in the eastern city of Gorakhpur, about 250 children are packed into pediatric wards meant for 52. Many comatose children, gaunt after days of fever and convulsions, lie two to a metal cot.
Housewife Dhaneswari is worn out nursing her nine-year-old daughter Lalita, who is infected by the disease and lies unconscious in her mother’s lap.
“She has not spoken for 10 days. What will become of her?” she asks.
Thousands of mosquito nets are being distributed across the affected parts of Uttar Pradesh, officials said, calling it a desperate bid to halt the spread of the disease.
But it seems like too little too late.
“The government has done nothing. People are afraid,” said Gorakhpur resident Feroz Khan.
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