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Rural Kanpur is fighting its most frightening scourge - a mystery disease that has left a long line of bodies in its trail and doesn’t seem anywhere finished. What started from one village two weeks ago has now spread to 350 and has so far claimed 160 lives. Thousands more are bed-ridden. On an average, 15 to 20 people have been dying every day; Saturday saw the highest toll in a day: 24. The district’s health department is somewhat confused about the nature of the disease that has struck. At the beginning, the diagnosis was viral fever. Then doctors concluded that it was falciparum malaria. But after two weeks, they have ruled out both but still don’t have an exact answer. “We really don’t know what exactly it is; we are depending on the finding of a team of specialists from New Delhi,” said Dr RC Agarwal, the district’s new chief medical officer.
Originally posted by argentus
That level of mortality would seem to suggest a hemmoraghic fever of some sort. I'm pretty sure I misspelled hemmoraghic. I'd think that they would be able to rule out Ebola, Marburg and the like though.
The district’s chief medical officer claims it is a water-borne disease. ‘The symptoms are clearly of viral fever and jaundice...
A majority of the sick people are children,’ chief medical officer Satya Singh told IANS by telephone.
He, however, blamed the villagers for not approaching doctors on time for treatment. ‘Instead of visiting the government hospital, which is barely three kilometres from the village, they (villagers) rely on quacks who give wrong and expired medicines,’ Singh said. He added that the disease was caused due to water-logging in most of the areas and unsafe drinking water used by villagers.