PALAMAU: 'Encephalitis' is a viral fever, caused by a bacterail infection sometimes, or due to weather conditions in specific geogrophical zone, says a renowned physican of Palamau, Dr. Amit Prakash. Expressing concerns on the latest media reports that has widely reported in Muzaffarpur of Bihar over 100 children's death.
Quoting NCBI reports, he says “Though, encephalitis virus is the major cause of Acute encephalitis syndrome [AES] in India (ranging from 5%-35%). Herpes simplex virus, Influenza A virus, West Nile virus, Chandipura virus, mumps, measles, dengue, Parvovirus B4, enteroviruses, Epstein-Barr virus and scrub typhus, S.pneumoniae are the other causes of AES in sporadic and outbreak form in India. The etiology in a large number of AES cases still remains unidentified”.
Dr. Prakash further added that AES was coined way back in 2008 by the World Health Organization to streamline the surveillance and research of AES in India. Over the years, the scenario of AES in India has improved significantly in terms of research and health care facilities. Albeit the development of vaccine against JEV and minocycline under the clinical trials, AES cases in India has not restricted itself to the JE aetiology. This is the biggest challenge clinicians in the field are facing. United State also drives it to check the encephalitis scenario in India, but they found nothing.
In Bihar, south region, which is now Jharkhand, had malaria at large. However, in north Bihar, kalazar [visceral leishmaniasis] used to spread. To curtail it medicines were prescribed by the dosctors accoridngly, even if the reports found to be negative, but the medicines for malaria and kalajar were to be given to the patients, and they were becoming alleviate too, he also added.
As per the World Health Organization [WHO] estimates 300-500 million malaria cases annually, with 90% of this burden being in Africa. In addition, the estimated annual mortality attributed to malaria ranges from 700,000 to 2.7 million globally and > 75% of them are African children and expectant mothers. Doubts have been expressed about reliability of these estimates because most of the hyper- and holoendemic countries, he cautions.
