Once the flood waters start receding in eastern Uttar Pradesh, experts fear that Japanese encephalitis—which has claimed over 150 lives in the last four months—may assume epidemic proportion.

Since the promises made by the state Government regarding the measures taken to prevent the disease has turned out to be a mere eyewash, the situation is once again ripe for outbreak of Japanese encephalitis. The disease has claimed over 25,000 lives since 1978, which include 1,593 deaths in 2005 and 476 deaths in 2006.

“The problem is that the Uttar Pradesh Government is way too engrossed in formulating curative measures, ignoring preventive measures. This is why successive governments the state have failed in controlling the disease... The poorest section in the region is the worst-affected. There are over two dozen villages in Kushinagar and Maharajganj where over 100 children have died of disease, the symptoms of which are similar to Japanese encephalitis. The cases could not be reported as the villagers had no means of reaching the hospitals,” said Dr RN Singh, a paediatrician in Gorakhpur. Singh has been treating patients affected by Japanese encephalitis.

Singh claimed that a single doze of the vaccine against the live attenuated Japanese encephalitis virus (strain 14-14-2), which was imported from Chengdu Institute of Biological Product, China and administered to over 50 lakh children in eastern UP was not fully effective. He showed the wrapper of the imported vaccine which said that the vaccine had to be administered thrice—at 8 months, 2 years and 7 years—to induce complete immunity against the virus.

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