CULLING THE VIRUS
Gorakhpur has turned the corner in the fight against encephalitis
When a month of treatment at a private hospital in Patna made no difference to twoyear-old Mandeep, his father Jogeshwar Rao from village Fareedpur in Chhapra district of Bihar, brought him to Baba Raghav Das Medical College, Gorakhpur. His only son, Mandeep had been suffering from Acute Encephalitis Syndrome. Admitted to the paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of BRD Medical College, his condition is now stable. Twenty-five other children suffering from AES admitted with him are also getting free quality treatment.
Gorakhpur, the home district of Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, first faced a major encephalitic epidemic in August 2017, four months after the BJP government took charge. More than 500 children died that year in Gorakhpur and its neighbourhood, while some 14 districts in east UP were affected.
Once the crisis was over, Adityanath started working on a two-tier strategy to tackle the disease. Health facilities in the region were improved and a mass awareness programme launched. The chief minister directly monitored the programme with monthly review meetings. A new 71-bed wing equipped with ventilators and a PICU was established in March 2018 in BRD Medical College for the specialised treatment of encephalitis patients. A neonatal ICU with 78 radiant warmers was also set up. BRD Medical College principal Dr Ganesh Kumar says,
“The state government has spent over Rs 100 crore to strengthen facilities for the treatment of encephalitis patients. Now we have 498 beds in the paediatric ward of the college. After the new 500bed wing comes up, we’ll be the only government hospital in north India to have 998 beds in its paediatric wing.”
The UP government has also set up eight mini PICUs in Gorakhpur division. Nodal health officer for encephalitis in the Gorakhpur region, Dr V.K. Srivastava says, “Each mini PICU has two beds with a ventilator for encephalitis patients in rural areas. Sixty-seven encephalitis treatment centres (ETCs) have been established in the region.”
A multilevel awareness programme, ‘Dastak’, was launched in February 2018, with health minister Siddharth Nath Singh’s full backing. Singh says, “The first Dastak campaign trained a total of 348,513 people including doctors, malaria officers, nurses, ANMs (auxiliary nurse midwives), gram pradhans, paramedical staff, teachers and others. After that, a door-to-door awareness programme was started in seven districts of the Gorakhpur and Basti divisions. From July 1, a fresh ‘Dastak’ campaign has been proposed for 18 districts in east UP.”
The initiative has shown positive results. In 2018, deaths due to AES dropped from 511 in 2017 to 166 in 14 districts of east UP. The number of AES cases reported also dropped from 2,247 in 2017 to 1,047 in 2018. In 2019, so far only 16 deaths have been recorded.