Killer weed, not encephalitis, may be behind UP deaths, Delhi sending teams

The study was submitted to both the UP and Central governments three weeks ago. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare plans to send to UP this week a multi-disciplinary team from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in Delhi to conduct an in-depth investigation into the findings of the study.

Experts from the National Institute of Virology in Pune have also been sent to UP to investigate the killer virus. “We do not know what the virus is and cannot rule out the possibility of Japanese encephalitis,” said Dr A C Mishra, Director NIV. The NIV team will join scientists from the NICD and Centre for Research and Medical Entomology, Madurai.

The worst-hit areas are Gorakhpur, Kushinagar and Maharajganj in eastern UP and Saharanpur and Muzaffarnagar in the western part of the state.

“For acceptance of the study’s findings, we have to depend on a government institution which can study it further in a larger perspective,” said Dr V S Nigam, Additional Director, Communicable Diseases Wing of the UP Health department.

The team, led by Dr Vipin Mohan Vashishta, a paediatrician at Mangla Hospital in Bijnor, began the study in 2002. They first established that the seasonal outbreak is “hepato-myo-encephalopathy” caused due to phototoxin (a plant toxin causing an allergic reaction) rather than encephalitis caused by a virus. As the study moved on, a clear association was drawn between the consumption of Cassia occidentalis and the outbreak of the disease in the western region.

“The plant grows luxuriantly in western UP with its flowering season in August-September and the seed pods season in September-December correlating to the seasonal disease outbreaks.

So far, we have traced around 75 cases, termed as encephalitis in western UP, and found that around 80-90 per cent of them have a confirmed history of consuming the weed before falling ill. Children either eat it out of curiosity or, in some cases, due to hunger by mixing it with salt or sugar,” Vashishta told The Indian Express.

“The report we have submitted is of cases studied till last year but we are continuing our study. This year, out of 14 cases examined by us, 10 have confirmed consumption of the weed. My only plea to the government is to spread awareness so that we can prevent future outbreaks,” he said.

Unable to define the virus, the state government is still reporting the western UP cases as ‘acute encephalitis’. According to latest official records, 64 cases and 34 deaths due to encephalitis have been reported so far in Saharanpur alone.