What's ailing the Bihar's children?
Bablu, 5, getting ready for school as his brother and mother look on. His recovery has been remarkable and added another twist to the mystery. (IE Photo)For two-three months before the monsoon, when the weather is hot and dry, when fruits are ripening on the mango and litchi trees, and when villages are preparing for the coming showers—layering roofs of their thatched huts with more bricks and straw—parents in north Bihar's Muzaffarpur district wake up each morning with dread.
1,600 children dead in UP, Bihar; no answers yet
Every year, around this time, 900 and 1,200 children between the ages of two and five are afflicted with a mystery illness. It starts with lethargy and a light fever, but shows the first signs of worsening towards the morning. Many of the children are dead before they can reach a hospital.
The district saw 44 deaths in 2011, 121 in 2012 and 39 this year. Bihar Health Secretary Sanjay Kumar admits they don't know the reason for this decline. "The cases have dropped this year simply because God has been kind," he says. "We don't know what we have done right. Right now, we are all groping in the dark."
Malnourished Bihar: What's ailing the children?
The latest to draw a blank is a team from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, US, which was roped in by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to test samples from this year. A report submitted to the state and Centre by the NCDC in the first week of September said the results have been negative for several known viruses, including Japanese Encephalitis (JE), enteroviruses, West Nile virus, dengue, Chandipura and Nipah.
Sixteen children die after consuming mid-day meal in Bihar school
In fact, after testing blood samples, rectal swabs and cereobrospinal fluids of patients, as well as brain tissues collected from deceased patients, researchers have not been able to isolate a single strand of a virus. The question now staring them in the face is: is it even a virus?
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