Japanese Encephalitis toll reaches 32

Gorakhpur, July 31 (UNI) With one more patient succumbing in the last 24 hrs, the Japanese Encephalitis (JE) toll in eastern Uttar Pradesh has reached an alarming figure of 32 this year.

Joint director health D P Mishra said the patients' inflow was continuing at the local Baba Raghav Das Medical College.

Since April, a total of 242 people, mostly children, sufferring from JE have been admitted at the medical college, of which 54 are still under treatment.

The patients belong to Gorakhpur, Deoria, Maharajganj, Sant Kabirnagar, Kushinagar, Basti, Siddharthnagar, Azamgarh, Gonda and Balrampur district of UP. Some cases also pertain to the adjoining districts of Bihar.

Gorakhpur has the dubious distiction of being the JE epicentre in the region. The endemic afflicts eastern UP during monsoon every year.

The government had undertaken a massive vaccination drive against the vector-borne disease, however, the efficacy and penetration of the drive has come under cloud with the mounting toll.

Last year, over 1,000 people -- a majority of them children -- had died of JE.

UNI VS KR DB1957