Eight-Year-old Mithilesh Sharma of Kushinagar died of viral encephalitis in the lobby of Gorakhpur Medical College today at 8.25 am. His relatives had brought him to the hospital at 5 am and they were waiting for a bed to be vacated — that is when a child would die of the disease. But Mithilesh died waiting for medical care. The doctors on duty asked his relatives to leave when they went to the duty room to ask for a death certificate. ‘‘We couldn’t write his name in our register. Doctoron ne uske saath ke logon ko bhaga diya,’’ a nurse told this reporter. Encephalitis is taking a heavy toll in Gorakhpur and the situation is slipping out of control. The Medical College Hospital has recorded a total of 39 deaths — all children — while 182 were admitted in the past one week. But the actual toll, unofficial sources say, is 96 — between July 19 and August 14. Six died on August 14 and six more the next day. Records show that on August 14, there were 64 children in the hospital and 53 more were admitted the next day. Today 65 cases were registered at the hospital. On an average, five patients are going to private hospitals daily and dying even before they can be referred to the Medical College Hospital. District Commissioner, Gorakhpur, Arvind Kumar held a meting with the doctors and district health officers today to review the situation. He asked the hospital authorities to vacate one more ward for encephalitis cases. Two wards are already packed with children, two patients sharing a bed. Many relatives of the patients told this reporter that they were purchasing medicines from the market — upto Rs 400 daily — but Kumar claimed there were enough medicines available in the store for the next three-four days. That the administration is groping in the dark was obvious from Kumar’s appeal to bring all patients to this hospital even while he announced ‘‘there is no treatment available for encephalitis. All that the doctors can do is to administer medicines. In fact, we are not even sure that it is encephalitis. We send the serum of the patient to Sanjay Gandhi Medical University, Lucknow, where it takes about six months to detect whether it is encephalitis or not.’’ But Dr R N Singh, a paediatrician who was earlier with the Medical College, is critical of the UP government and gives the example of Tamil Nadu which, he claims, has driven away encephalitis. ‘‘As per my sources, 96 patients have died of this disease in the past one week. You can see that most of the cases are from rural Gorakhpur and districts of Purvanchal. I had sent a recommendation to the state government three years ago to fight the disease. Pigs are the main carriers of the encephalitis virus. It spreads when a mosquito bites a pig and then a child. It directly affects the brain of the child. It affects children only because they have little resistance,’’ he said. Dr Singh said his recommendation for large-scale vaccination in the rural areas and spraying of insecticides in the paddy fields could have checked the menace. He pointed out that the vaccine for encephalitis was manufactured in Kasauli from where the Tamil Nadu government was procuring it ever since it stopped getting it from China. The health department records show that in 1978, a total of 721 children had died of this disease in UP, 496 in 1980, 404 in 1985, 298 in 1986, 1228 in 1988, 484 in 1989, 659 in 1991 and 230 in 1992. After 1998, every year the disease has claimed the lives of more than 200 children during the rainy season. The doctors at the paediatric department of the Medical College, speak on the condition of anonymity. ‘‘We have been requesting every year for a separate encephalitis ward. Last year Rs 72 lakh was approved and the college purchased some equipment. But those were old and useless machines. So the head of the department refused to install them,’’ they said. Commissioner Arun Kumar says a vaccination programme was conducted a few years ago in which 2.50 lakh children were covered. ‘‘But we don’t have enough vaccines to cover the entire Purvanchal,’’ he said.
