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At least 20 people, including seven children, have died of kala azar and over 100 have taken ill in Bihar's East Champaran district in the last one week.
Last fortnight eight kala azar deaths were reported from a village in Areraj subdivision of East Champaran district. Some deaths were reported from Vuwan Chapra, Lahaladpur, and Bareria villages and Kalyanpur, Teraria, and Govindganj blocks, official sources said.
The Centre had launched the modified kala azar control programme in the district to eradicate the disease, but it has failed.
If reports of the Social Research and Development Centre, a non-governmental organisation, are to be believed, over 1,000 people are suffering from this disease in 27 blocks of the district.
In the last one year, about 60 people have died of kala azar in Teraria block alone. Nearly 100 people are battling for their lives in the absence of basic medical facilities.
The district civil surgeon, Dr Mahesh Chandra Thakur, said the condition of about 25 people in Village Bareria was critical. He admitted that there were no drugs to treat the disease and said he had asked the district authorities to provide medical aid.
East Champaran District Magistrate S Seokumar said he had released Rs 50,000 to purchase sodium antimony gluconate, a drug to treat kala azar.
Reports of people suffering from kala azar are coming from other north Bihar districts as well. But the situation is most alarming in East Champaran, which is seeing a shortage of basic medicines.
The Indian government had set 2007 as the deadline for eradicating kala azar, which is transmitted by sand flies and characterised by irregular bouts of fever, weight loss, swelling of the spleen and liver, and anaemia.
So far incidence of the disease in the state has come down from 75,523 cases and 1,417 deaths in 1992 to 12,909 cases and 130 deaths in 2000. And in the first six months of 2001, at least 4,994 people contracted the disease while 77 died.
India accounts for 91 per cent of kala azar cases and deaths in southeast Asia. In Bihar, the history of the disease dates back to 1882 when a disease called 'kala dukh' was recorded in Purnea district. The disease took an epidemic form in 1891, 1917, and 1933, claiming thousands of lives.
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