Following the negligence of the government machinery to spread awareness about the toxicity of wild weed, cassia occidentalis, 25 children have fallen ill and over several children in western Uttar Pradesh have succumbed to the toxicity.

Interestingly, spreading awareness about the wild weed is the only way to restrict the number of deaths occurring due to its toxicity.

Ideally, the awareness drive should begin before its blooming season in October-November, but so far the authorities have not taken any major step in this direction.

As a result, the numbers of cases have started increasing in the last one month and particularly in the last one week.

The buck does not stop here. Doctors in the affected districts are not even making any extra effort to segregate these patients from the usual Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) patients. Thus, experts are afraid that some of the deaths due to toxicity of weed are going unnoticed as well.

“In the last 15 days, 10 children suffering with cassia occidentalis toxicity have been personally monitored by me in Bijnor, of which seven have died,” said Dr Vipin M Vashishtha, pediatrician, who has conducted various researches in this area and has been constantly monitoring cassia poisoning cases in western UP. Similar cases have been reported in Saharanpur as well as Muzzafarnagar, but a large number of cases are going unnoticed because doctors are registering them under general AES, said Vashishtha.

Cases related to brain fever, testing negative for Japanese Encephalitis, are registered under AES. The wild weed toxicity cases are also registered under AES as it also has symptoms like brain fever.

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