West Bengal: Fear of unknown fever grips villagers - hantavirus suspected

[Ronan Kelly]

Fear of unknown fever grips villagers
Prithvijit Mitra & Suman Mondal, TNN | Nov 4, 2011, 03.36AM IST

BHAGABANPUR (East Midnapore) : Fear stalks the dusty, pot-holed lanes of Nilkanthapur - a poor village on the East and West Midnapore border, 170 km from Kolkata. A killer virus, that has taken half-a-dozen lives in the last three years, is back to torment the area and its poor inhabitants who have little access to proper healthcare. It could be the deadly Hanta virus or Korean haemorrhagic fever that has a 50% mortality rate, some experts fear. Even though a confirmation is awaited from the National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune and the School of Tropical Medicine (STM) in Kolkata that had sent teams to collect blood samples from the affected area on Wednesday, the symptoms of the fever that has been striking villagers have been chillingly similar to that of Hanta virus. NIV and STM teams will visit the village on Friday.

Ten-year-old Sudip Jana and his neighbour Nayan Jana, 6, have had a narrow escape. The two young boys, in a critical state, had to be taken to the Institute of Child Health (ICH) in Kolkata for treatment. They have survived but still have a low fever that has kept their parents worried and neighbours in anxiety. While Sudip was released a fortnight back, Nayan returned from Kolkata on Thursday. Both are frail and can barely walk. Scores of others in the village are suffering from a similar fever. Since 2008, there has been an outbreak in the area every October.

"Initially, we took it to be a normal fever, but it refused to go away. After a week, he turned very weak and then started having these bouts of delirium and a splitting headache. It was followed by several spells of convulsion. Sudip would scream out in pain and fall unconscious. We were terrified since the symptoms were close to the mystery fever that has plagued our village so we rushed him to the local Bhagabanpur health centre. They failed to do anything and referred us to Kolkata," said Badal Jana, Sudip's father.

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The fever has been striking in neighbouring Mongorajpur as well, a village in Sabang of West Midnapore. Three have succumbed to it since 2009. A patient from Patashpur is now admitted in a Kolkata hospital. The symptoms have been identical - low fever for a week followed by a sudden spell of delirium, vomiting and convulsion. Rabindranath Barman, a farmer, lost his wife Sandhyarani to the fever in 2009. "She had this slight temperature for about a fortnight. One afternoon, she fainted and then started vomiting. By the time it stopped, she was hardly breathing. We rushed her to a Tamluk hospital and from there to the ID Hospital in Kolkata. No medicine worked," said Barman. Doctors told him that Sandhyarani 'possibly' had Japanese encephalitis. "It was the mystery fever, for sure," said Barman. His neighbours Swapan Mondol and Lakshmi Ghorui fell prey to the fever in 2010.

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The district health administration said it was monitoring the situation. "The experts will visit once again on Friday. There is yet no confirmation on the virus and we are waiting for the reports from STM and NIV," said chief medical officer (CMOH) Sukumar Das.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ever-grips-villagers/articleshow/10600471.cms

 

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Re: West Bengal: Fear of unknown fever grips villagers

Re: West Bengal: Fear of unknown fever grips villagers

http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/10587679.cms

Deadly virus scare in BengalNov 3, 2011, 03.59AM IST TNN


BHAGADANPUR (East Midnapore): An eight-year-old boy in an East Midnapore village is suspected to have been infected by the Hantavirus strain, which is not common to this part of the world. It has now come to light that over the past two years, three villagers have died of an unknown fever which breaks out just at the onset of winter.

On Wednesday, a stream of top doctors from the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune and Kolkata's School of Tropical Medicine (STM) landed in Nilkantapur village of Bhagabanpur Block I to verify whether conditions exist there for the origin of this very uncommon viral fever.

Two boys of the village, Nayan Jana and Sudip Jana, have been suffering from fever for the past week. After admission to the district hospital in Tamluk, Nayan was referred to a hospital in Kolkata. Tests in the Kolkata hospital revealed that Nayan's fever was not due to any common virus strain, or due to malaria or dengue. His blood samples were then sent to STM and from there to NIV.

The preliminary finding of experts at Pune was Hantavirus, said district health officials, adding however that it could turn out to be something even more critical. Nayan is still under treatment in Kolkata.

Sudip was discharged from the district hospital after his fever receded, but his condition relapsed at home. Sudip's parents then consulted the district hospital doctors, who referred him to Kolkata as well. But his parents opted to treat their son at home, saying they could not afford to take him to Kolkata.

The team of top doctors - including an expert from NIV, three from STM, four from state health department headquarters Swasthya Bhavan, one from PHE and East Midnapore district health officials - collected blood samples of Nayan's family members and around 25 other villagers. Among them was Sudip, whose is still down with fever.

The team members laid nets to collect mosquitoes flying around Nayan's and others' houses and caught a rat, said Dr Dilip Biswas, East Midnapore's chief medical officer (health). This was done because Hantavirus spreads from rodents.

District health officials said if the germ is indeed Hantavirus, it could lead to the spread of the potentially fatal haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). The virus also causes Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) in humans which, however, cannot be transmitted from one person to another. The virus affects humans through rodent bites, urine, saliva or contact with rodent waste.

Hantavirus gets its name from the Hantan river in South Korea which provided the first member of the group of viruses, Hantan virus (HTNV). It was isolated in the late-1970s and is one of several Hantaviruses that cause HFRS, formerly known as Korean A-class haemorrhagic fever.

Bimal Jana, a villager who lost his sister in October last year after she was down with fever for five days, said another two of their neighbours also died at the onset of winter two years ago.

The state health authorities, however, refused to confirm the disease. "The experts from Pune will let us know if the virus is detected. They haven't yet told us anything yet," claimed Susanta Banerjee, director of medical education.