(63 children have died in Gorakhpur’s BRD Medical College and Hospital over the past five days amidst a rush of patients in peak encephalitis season from July to October. This article was originally published on 22 February 2017 as a part of The Quint’s Uttar Pradesh election coverage and is being republished from the archives.)
At the Gorakhnath temple, there is an unending stream of devotees through the day, content with making their earthly offerings and happy that their prayers would be answered by the 11th century saint interred there. About eight kilometers north of Gorakhpur town, the flow of anxious men and women into the building that houses the encephalitis ward at the BRD Medical College and Hospital is equally – if not more – heavy.
The first is an abode of Hindu spirituality in the northeastern corner of Uttar Pradesh while the second is a dark chamber where infants every year – between July and October – fall prey to the deadly Japanese encephalitis virus.
Death brought by this foreign strain of deadly virus has been ceaselessly and faithfully visiting and revisiting the eastern UP districts since 1978 when it penetrated the lives of people – mostly country folks – leaving in its wake destruction, as successive governments – both at the Centre and the state – have failed to banish the scourge.
Belonging to Gurwalia in eastern Uttar Pradesh, she has been in the hospital for 25 days and was referred to Gorakhpur by a district hospital after she showed symptoms of high fever and vomiting. As she breathes unevenly, she is under the watchful yet weary eyes of her elder sister – 14-year-old Kajal. She has been staying in Gorakhpur alone, living in the hospital, with occasional visits from her parents and other members of the family.
But despite being a permanent fixture in Gorakhpur for nearly 40 years now, encephalitis and its prevention is not an election issue in the city. Open drains, waterlogged streets, pools of dirty water on the roads, piling and stinky mounds of garbage and whizzing mosquitoes are a common sight in the city – even outside the encephalitis treatment department in the Medical College complex.
Dr KP Kushwaha is the former principal of BRD Medical College and is widely considered to be a respected authority on encephalitis in India. As he sits on a cane chair at the veranda of his house a few kilometers away from the Medical College, he recounts how in Delhi when a case of encephalitis was reported in 2013, vaccinations were given to every child in the area. It was a response to a disease on ‘war footing.’ In Gorakhpur, there is an enemy, but no one to launch a battle cry against it.
In September 2016, Rahul Gandhi in a roadshow in Gorakhpur had accused the Narendra Modi government of ignoring encephalitis in the city. Earlier in the year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone for an AIIMS in the city. But encephalitis in Gorakhpur is not public health crisis limited only to the district. The city sees a steady stream of patients from districts in eastern UP, Western Bihar and Nepal.
If healthcare in far-off districts – which are often the first line of defence against diseases like encephalitis – is not improved, will more medical infrastructure in Gorakhpur help?
In a dark ward in BRD Medical College, Manturi and her son Govind would have benefited if a hospital in eastern Champaran, Bihar would have diagnosed encephalitis earlier.
In Gorakhpur, for one-and-a-half months, Govind is in a precarious condition; breathing and eating through a machine as the beep-beep of the Draeger monitor plays out in the background. Dressed in a pink saree and speaking softly with a voice reflecting her exhaustion and desperation, she says her son is getting better. “He is being fed, at least.”
“She’s getting better”, she insists as she gently covers her sister with a yellow blanket.
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Published: 22 Feb 2017,01:59 PM IST