This story is from September 20, 2021

Kids’ fever cases giving states shivers

Kids’ fever cases giving states shivers
On Sunday, 14-year-old Chhotu, son of a former pradhan of Chahiha village in western Uttar Pradesh, died while he was being taken to a hospital in Agra. Chhotu is among eight children who have died following high fever in the last four days in Agra district.
While this comes on the heels of UP's Firozabad district recording deaths of 61 people who had viral fever and dengue-like symptoms, Chhattisgarh has reported deaths of three children in one month.
It's not just in UP and Chhattisgarh. While the country fights Covid-19 and braces for a possible third wave of the pandemic, doctors in many states across India are dealing with people afflicted with fever, and allied complications, due to causes other than Covid.
States like Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Karnataka have also reported such cases. Most of these states have reported cases of dengue, scrub typhus, Japanese encephalitis, malaria, leptospirosis and typhoid, affecting mostly children.
It began with news of a "mystery fever" killing children in several districts in western UP, prompting a team of doctors from Lucknow to visit Firozabad, Agra, Mathura and Aligarh. It found that D2 strain of the dengue virus was causing the fever and many deaths were attributed to scrub typhus-induced meningitis.
In Chhattisgarh, the state government, worried over the deaths of children, has scrambled a team of paediatricians to Koriya district where more than 80 children are hospitalised with fever, cough and cold. State health officials said the deaths were due to a combination of the fever and congenital diseases.
In Bihar, government data shows around 7,000 children visited government health institutes with fever and other flu-related symptoms this month. So far, 15 have died. State health department special secretary Sanjay Kumar Singh said humid weather and receding flood water could be the reason for children falling ill. While there was a scare initially in neighbouring Jharkhand about a mystery fever afflicting people, it turned out to be Japanese encephalitis.

"Viral fever and dengue cases have been reported among children in Karnataka. But there have been no deaths," said Dr KS Sanjay, director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health, Bengaluru. The government-run Children's Hospital, which gets referral cases from across the state, has seen 40 cases of dengue in the last two months.
While Uttarakhand government denied reports of any cases of scrub typhus surfacing, sources in the health department confirmed the presence of such cases from a few districts in August and September.
In Madhya Pradesh, over 2,500 dengue cases have been detected since July. Districts of north MP, which share their borders with UP, are on alert. However, in Bengal, health officials are still foxed, with more than 100 children affected by a mystery fever in north Bengal earlier this week. Five deaths have been reported so far.
While the cause of the fever remains unknown, none of the affected has tested positive for Covid or dengue.
(With inputs from Agra, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Dehradun, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Patna, Raipur and Ranchi)
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