Supreme Court to hear plea on Bihar's Encephalitis deaths next week

The Supreme Court to agreed to hear the plea on Bihar's Encephalitis deaths. The PIL will be heard next week. The plea seeks the top court’s intervention and direction to urgently constitute a team of medical experts for treatment of children suffering from Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar. The plea alleges inaction by the Nitish Kumar government and seeks urgent intervention by the top court to ensure proper medical care, adequate staff, medicines.

According to official data released by the hospitals in Bihar, the death count due to the Acute Encephalitis Syndrome rose to 112 on Wednesday. The parents at the Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH) say that their children are suffering from fever and allege that they're not being admitted at the hospital. They also allege that no ORS was ever given to them, news agency ANI said. “Our children are burning with fever since 4-5 days. Doctor asked us to get medicines for them and said they'll admit them if fever doesn't go down after that. We don't have money,” an angry mother way quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

On Tuesday, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar visited the SKMCH hospital, where more than 300 children had been admitted with complaints of AES since June 1. A team of Union health department officials visited the district over the weekend and clarified that AES was an umbrella of symptoms, unlike Japanese Encephalitis which was a viral infection.

Encephalitis is a viral disease that causes flu-like symptoms such as high fever, convulsions and headaches in patients. The state health department has cited hypoglycemia, a condition caused by very low levels of blood sugar, as one of the main reasons for the deaths.