We Let Them Die

Failure of states to provide basic nutrition and health facilities has led to the death of hundreds of children from the preventable acute encephalopathy syndrome. BANJOT KAUR from Bihar and SHAGUN KAPIL from Uttar Pradesh report

- Banjot Kaur & Shagun Kapil

Death looms over Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district. The tragedy that robbed Ramesh Sahni of his daughter on June 15 had, by July 3, turned into a mass curse, killing 168 children in the state. The victims, mostly girls, are below 15 years, belong to socially and economically deprived sections, and live in villages without easy access to healthcare centres.

Acute encephalopathy syndrome or AES, a brain fever whose cause remains unknown (see ‘Enigmatic AES’ on p36 ), strikes in and around Muzaffarpur and has killed 1,673 children in the state since 2010, when the government started a centralised registry for it. This year, one in every five AES patientsin Bihar has died. The tragedy is even more acute in Muzaffarpur, which accounts for 65 per cent of the state’s 539 AES cases and 58 per cent of the total deaths till July 3. The disease has an unmistakable pattern: most children went to sleep at night hungry and woke up in the morning with fever and seizures. Most of them died because their nearest health centre did not even have glucose drips.

Vijay Kumar, who lost his six-year-old son on June 6, says the primary health centre nearest to his Bahadurpur village in Muzaffarpur refused to treat his ailing son because it did not have glucose. Kumar had to travel for over two hours to reach the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH) in Muzaffarpur. “My son went into coma during the travel. Four hours later, he died,” says Kumar.