Chandipura: A killer virus on the rampage

NEW DELHI: A killer virus is on the rampage in India. After claiming the lives of at least 250 children in parts of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, it killed over a dozen persons in Gujarat recently.
The virus, known to have caused only a mild infection in a patient in 1965 in Nagpur, has been found to be the cause of these deaths. The virus seems to have turned into a human killer in all these years.It was named Chandipura after its first patient.
What adds to the concern is the fact that there is no treatment for this virus as yet. As people have not been exposed to this pathogen, immunity obviously is very low. A scientist with the National Institute of Communicable Diseases pointed out that during a recent outbreak in parts of Gujarat, children succumbed within 24 hours.
The children complained of high fever, convulsions, diarrhoea and headache during the outbreaks and succumbed to it within 48 hours. In Andhra Pradesh, 183 children lost their lives last year.
Scientists were initially perplexed and the report of the National Institute of Virology did not find ready acceptance with the government either. Scientists at the NICD ruled out the possibility of such a finding as they could not locate the vector, the sandfly, in the areas of outbreak.
However, the authoritative medical journal, Lancet, has not just drawn attention to these outbreaks, but also called it an "emerging pathogen".
Scientists at the Indian Council of Medical Research admit that the outbreaks have not been thoroughly investigated in the past.
"We didn''t have test kits. Outbreaks of this virus were passed off for encephalitis," they say and add that that any outbreak of viral encephalitis would now also be investigated for Chandipura.
The only other region where the virus has been isolated from its vector is West Africa. Whether the pathogen can emerge in several other parts of India is a question of scientific debate. "It depends on the presence of its vector, the sandfly," scientists point out. They, however, agree that with a poor disease surveillance system, the possibility of an outbreak going undetected is also high.
In fact, outbreaks of this nature were reported from several parts of India during 1958, 1965, 1968, 1978 and 1983. In the absence of a defined cause, these were attributed to dengue, Japanese encephalitis and even measles, among other diseases.