LUCKNOW, 15 September 2005 — The death toll from an outbreak of Japanese encephalitis in northern India neared 700 yesterday with 21 fatalities reported overnight as state health officials sought more international help.
“At least 21 more persons died overnight, taking the toll to 696,” said Dr. O.P. Singh, chief of the provincial health department of Uttar Pradesh state.
“We have asked for help from UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund) and WHO (the World Health Organization),” he said. “We are in touch with officials of these two international agencies.” Eimar Barr, deputy director of programs for UNICEF in New Delhi, confirmed the agency has been contacted.
“We are providing help with surveillance of the outbreak. We have also deployed a team of health experts,” Barr said, adding that UNICEF had already provided $26,000 to hire doctors and nurses in affected areas.
“UNICEF is working closely with the ministry of health and WHO to ensure that adequate vaccines are available for early next year...there is a global shortage of vaccines so we are working closely with the government,” Barr said. A.K. Rathi, chief pediatrician of the worst hit district of Gorakhpur, said at the weekend that earlier reinforcements promised by UNICEF had not arrived in full.
Doctors in Gorakhpur, 250 km southeast of the state capital Lucknow, have said they lack medicines, oxygen and medical staff.
Of the 150 new cases reported in state-run hospitals in the last 24 hours, 85 — mainly young children — were located in Gorakhpur, said Dr. K.P. Kushwaha, a pediatrician at the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur.
“We are short of staff. Still we are attending on patients. We cannot refuse medical help to these tiny tots,” Kushwaha said.
In Lucknow’s King George Medical College 28 new patients were admitted overnight filling the children’s encephalitis ward well beyond its capacity of 42, Many children shared beds or space on the floor. Health workers say a lack of preventive vaccination is to blame for the scale of the outbreak. The illness is endemic to the region.
“It is a man-made catastrophe. The deaths could have been prevented if government had done a little bit of homework before,” said Dr. T.N. Dhule, head of the Department of Microbiology at the Lucknow-based Sanjay Gandhi Post-Graduate Institute of India.
A court in Allahabad city, 200 km southeast of Lucknow, ordered the state and federal governments Tuesday to supply anti-encephalitis vaccines in disease-ravaged areas and submit a progress report within two weeks on measures taken to check the disease.
