Panic grips UP towns after dozens of high fever deaths

lucknow — Indian health authorities are rushing medical supplies to north Indian towns and villages where at least 50 people have died from fever over the past two weeks, topping the number of fever-related deaths over a three-month period last year.

Patients suffering from fever and bouts of shivering are crowding hospitals in the Rohilkhand region, according to Dr Vineet Shukla, a senior Uttar Pradesh state health official in Bareilly, 250km southwest of Lucknow, the state capital. One district hospital has received more than 1,500 patients since August 30.

“We do not have enough beds to keep them,” Shukla said, adding that the cause of the fevers was not immediately known. The state’s head medical doctor, Padmakar Singh, said makeshift clinics equipped with malaria kits were being set up in villages where feverrelated sicknesses had been reported. Mosquito control vehicles have also sprayed insecticide.

Mahendra Lal, head of the village of Hasanpur in Bareilly, said more than two out of three people in the village of 300 residents had fallen ill. He said those who could have traveled to nearby cities for treatment in private hospitals. Mohammed Sadiq, a resident of Hasanpur, said his wife died from fever last week. “I lost my wife because I stayed back with a hope that doctors will come and give treatment. She would have been alive today if I too had moved out to some big city,” he said. —