AES - Experts Point Fingers At Malnutrition And State Apathy

Though the cause is yet unknown, experts point fingers at malnutrition and state apathy for the death of 153 children in the latest outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome.

- Namita Kohli

Muzaffarpur is on search mode, as is Harivanshpur village. While medical experts and bureaucrats are trying to find the elusive cause of a disease that has killed more than 100 children in the district in a few days, villagers from Harivanshpur are looking for their leaders and district officials. Posters announcing a reward of 015,000 and 08,000 for finding Ram Vilas Paswan, Union minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution, and Pashupati Paras, Muzaffarpur MP, have come up at the village. “Seven kids have died in this village alone. Rest of the children have been packed off to neighbouring villages to protect them from chamki bukhar [local name for encephalitis],” says Rajesh Sahni, 35, whose daughter, Puja Kumari, all of four, died in the latest outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES). “But, our leaders and officials have not come even once to ask about our condition.”

To an outsider, the AES-hit district of Muzaffarpur could seem dystopian. Sick children struck by a ‘mysterious’ brain disease land in the overcrowded, filthy and under-staffed ICU wards of the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), ground zero of the current crisis. Heaps of garbage dot its premises. A persistent stench wafts through the airless corridors. Doctors and nurses rush in and out of the ICU, visibly stretched and unable to handle the constant rush of feeble, feverish and comatose bodies.