(Daily News Scan - DNS English) Acute Encephalitis Syndrome
Important Points:
The deaths due to acute encephalitis syndrome has raised to 115 in shri Krishna medical college and hospital in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur. After the relatives of the children have protested against the CM of the state, a litigation is filed against the state government. A public interest litigation envolves a petition filed by a person or an organization who have no personal interest in the litigation and the court also accepts the litigation if it is concerned with the public in large. The litigation is always filed against the government and not against any private party. The PIL works as an effective tool towards social change or welfare. The court has also accepted the PIL and is ready to hear the plea that is demanding an urgent constitutuion of a medical team for the treatment of children suffering from AES.
Today’s DNS will highlight the issues related to AES, and will also talk about the various factors involved with the syndrome.
Acute encephalitis syndrome is also known as “chamki bukhar” in bihar’s local language. AES is not a disease , instead it is an umbrella term for the symptoms that indicate the inflammation of the brain. Inflammation in the brain causes irritation or swelling in the brain tissues or blood vessels. This causes muscle weakness in the brain, dizziness , or lack of coordination.
Encephalitis is an acute inflammation or swelling of the brain occurring due to a viral infection or due to body’s own immune system. Bihar’s incident is being doubted over the issue that children are getting this virus due to “litchis”. Why litchi is being targeted has a reason. As AES is also caused by immune system, doctors are stressing on the malnourishment of the children affected by this syndrome. At this time of the year, areas like bihar and muzaffarpur are rich in growing litchis. A study has shown that malnourished children who ate raw lychees and did not had a meal after it got caught by the syndrome. This is because raw lychees have high level of toxins like MCPG, that causes pain in the brain if taken on an empty stomach and by not taking adequate carbohydrates after the consumption of lychees for a long time. So, the children got affected by these toxins because they did not had a proper amount of food after they ate lychees which decreased their glucose level in the body and got sick. Why does only undernourished children get sick due to low glucose in this case? It is because the well-nourished children have reserved glycogen which breaks down into the body whenever there is a lack of glucose and circulates into the blood to fulfill the requirement of the glucose. Unlikely, in bihar malnourished children do not have reserved glycogen in their body and they are facing a severe breakdown.
The toxins in lychee stops the natural mechanism of the body to restore the glucose level in the body which results in the release of amino acids that are harmful to brain and the released amino acid makes the brain cells swell up which results in coma or even death.
The current situation can be controlled if the malnourished children do not eat lychee in a big amount and whatever amount they eat , they should not go to bed on an empty stomach.
But the problem here is, the malnourishment in these children and the cause of it. Despite of 50 % increase in the GDP since 1991, India has the largest number of undernourished children. The major cause of this undernourishment in India is the economic inequality and low social status. Due to this some portion of the large population do not get quality and quantity of food. Malnourished mothers are not able to feed their babies in a proper way. 44% of Indian children are underweight and 72% of the infants are malnourished and 52% of the married women have anaemia.
The government has launched numerous schemes for the nourishment of children in india. Such as:
Integrated child development scheme ICDC , national rural health mission, mid day meals, etc. whereby supplementary nutrition, growth monitoring, counsellig health of mother for child care , hot cooked meal to children attending school would be provided.
But despite of all these schemes in india, children not growing upto the expectation because the government is not spending much on the health of the people. According to the national sample survey report 2016, government is spending only 1.5 % on health services whereby Britain spends 9.6 %, America spends 18 %. This small amount of spendings on health makes india the least concerned country on the scale of health issues.
