Mystery illness kills at least 20 in Nepal

KATHMANDU, Oct 31: A mysterious disease has killed at least 20 people in two villages of west Nepal over the past 10 days, and hundreds more are sick, a health official said today.

''People suddenly catch high fever, start shivering, faint and then die,'' said Ram Bahadur Chand, a senior official the district public health office in Nepalgunj, 321 km west of the capital, Kathmandu.

Local media reports put the death toll at 36 from four remote villages near Nepalgunj.

''We have 20 confirmed deaths so far and more than 300 people are suffering from the unknown disease,'' Chand told Reuters.

He said 200 blood samples had been collected and medical workers had reached the affected villages.

Each year Nepal's rickety health infrastructure run by a mere 1300 doctors in 87 hospitals around the country deals with hundreds of thousands of cases of pneumonia, cholera, fever, diarrhoea and tuberculosis.

Many of the poor Himalayan nation's 26 million people are either unable to afford the cost of medical treatment or do not have access to basic health care.

REUTERS