The recent outbreak of epidemics hits the national media which usually goes unnoticed with the opening pages grabbing eyeball of cricketing news stories. Acute encephalitis syndrome claiming 136 lives of children in Bihar. Immediately hearing the name of the disease it occurs to me, that a movie called awakening also emphasizes on the similar disease.
But of course here the case is different, as you can see from the video that the film portrays about chronic patients looking old. It is only acute and occurs primarily as a transitioning phase from summer to the humid climate in India. The symptoms at an early stage look similar to the carrier vector virus costing lives leaving neurological symptoms to patients.
There are different kinds of encephalitis being hit in this country and the common one being Japanese encephalitis. The primary reason found is lack of clean environment and others include malnutrition among infants. In parts of Bihar, where the outbreak has been severe, such factors suit the socio-economically backward situations of people. Initial outbreak creates panic among people that disable them to handle such a situation.
So it becomes onus on government to ensure collective responsibility to phase out such outbreak. But often in media found blame game with politics of such situation especially in talk shows.
By purely relying on science alone such a situation cannot be cured. With the vector outbreak targetting mal nutritious children it is imperative for doctors to show some wisdom beyond practicing medicine. As in the movie awakening, it has been shown the will of a doctor giving rise to hope of patients, a wish occurs to me that such a situation could be brought down by the will humans.
Understanding such intricacies of life any common outbreak cannot be wished away. Who knows tomorrow what is waiting in our door? so being sensitive, my empathies goes to the affected victims of this disease to bring them out from such mysteries.
Moreover, in this country, there has been a common practice of blaming the government. It also found that treatment for symptoms like hypoglycemia shows the promising result to counter the outbreak. But the disease has to be handled in a wise manner instead of prescribing all patients with ‘One size fits all’ approach which tends to worsen the situation.
Instead, other factors of malnutrition among our socio-economically backward families have to be considered. This paves the way for established primary health care system with cost-effective medical practices for our poor.
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