NICD team names UP’s killer fever as encephalitis

A team from the National Institute of Communicable Disease (NICD) today gave a name to the mystery fever that has claimed the lives of at le...

A team from the National Institute of Communicable Disease (NICD) today gave a name to the mystery fever that has claimed the lives of at least 51 children in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, in the past one month.

According to the experts, 20 of the 51 children had died of viral encephalitis. The cases were reported from scattered regions, which means there is no possibility of an epidemic of Japanese encephalitis as was being suspected earlier.

The team, headed by NICD Director Shiv Lal, came back from Saharanpur today and submitted an interim report about the cause of deaths to Health Secretary S.K. Naik.

The report laid to rest rumours that a mysterious measles virus was responsible for the deaths. The team, which included the Head of Paediatrics in Kalawati Saran Hospital, A. K. Dutta, told the Health Secretary that 20 of the 51 children had died of viral encephalitis. The rest, according to the report, had died of acute gastroenteritis, septicemia and broncho-pneumonia.

An NICD team had earlier visited Saharanpur and picked up 31 serum samples from the region. Twenty of them tested positive for viral encephalitis.