Chicken Pox? claims 11 lives, leaves 65 ill

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Mysterious disease claims 11 lives, leaves 65 ill
Manish Sirhindi
Tribune News Service

Dera Halwana (Karnal), July 12
A sudden outbreak of disease, believed to be chickenpox, in this dusty little village has claimed 11 lives and has left 65 others seriously ill. Most of the victims are under 14 years of age.

Though the district administration has stepped up efforts to curtail further spread of the disease, the situation here continues to be critical.

The village, which is inhabited mostly by nomadic tribes, was gripped by the epidemic about seven days ago. So far, the disease has claimed the lives of 11 children.

Reluctance on the part of parents to take their ailing wards to nearby healthcare centres has baffled the local authorities, which claimed that lack of proper treatment resulted in the death of children.

Some of the parents claimed that the disease was a wrath of ?mata? and during the disease they were not supposed to cross a river. Hence, they did not escort their children to hospital.

Absence of a primary healthcare centre in the village has added to the miseries of villagers, who are losing the lives of their children, as they did not receive proper information about how to tackle the disease.

The district administration was unaware of the epidemic till yesterday. Deputy commissioner Balbir Singh Malik said the local authorities were informed about the prevailing circumstances in the village by some residents, following which a team of seven doctors was immediately sent there to take stock of the situation.

The team of doctors rushed 29 children of the village to the trauma care centre at the district headquarters while 65 others were administered first round of medicines in order to fight the disease.

The DC claimed that two out of 29 children had been referred to the PGI in Rohtak, while 11 others had been kept under observation at the trauma centre. The rest had been discharged as their condition improved soon after the treatment.

The administration had set up a temporary dispensary at the village, where three doctors had been deputed. Besides, ambulances and other vehicles had also been stationed at the village to transport any ailing person to hospital.

The health teams had taken samples of blood and water from the village, which had been sent to various laboratories for examination. The deputy commissioner claimed that further spread of the disease was unlikely.

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[Giuseppe]

Re: Chicken Pox? claims 11 lives, leaves 65 ill

Chickenpox refers to a precise disease, namely varicella-zoster virus esanthematic manifestations.

It is a highly infectious disease, that spreads quickly among children and unvaccinated adults.

The skin manifestations includes: red spots (macula), bumpy spots (papula), vescicles with transparent fluid (vescicula) and finally yellow patchy vescicles (pustola).

Sometimes yellow vescicles could turn red after skin hemorrhages.

For differential diagnosis against smallpox, one may see that the skin manifestations appear in various stage of maturation at the same time, with concurrent presence of red spots, papulae, vesciculae and pustolae. Smallpox is characterized instead by the presence of skin lesions of same type in a precise moment.

In immunocompromised patients and in adults, varicella-zoster virus infections may result in serious complications such as viral pneumonia, encephalitis, hemorrhagic manifestations with fatal outcomes.

Treatment is supportive and symptomatic, and the use of antivirals may reduce the duration of illness if early implemented with correct dosage.

To note that varicella-zoster virus seems to cause severe illness after a series of passages among siblings, with the index case with mild symptoms and most severe ones at the end of the chain of infections.