As Mystery Illness Stalks Its Young, India Intensifies Search for a Killer (NYTimes, July 14 2013)

[Giuseppe]

[Source: The New York Times, full page: (LINK).]


As Mystery Illness Stalks Its Young, India Intensifies Search for a Killer

By GARDINER HARRIS

Published: July 13, 2013


MUZAFFARPUR, India ? The children begin arriving every year in mid-May, brought to an overburdened hospital here in one of India?s most impoverished areas by their panic-stricken mothers.

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[sharon sanders]

Re: As Mystery Illness Stalks Its Young, India Intensifies Search for a Killer (NYTimes, July 14 2013)

Please see:

India Encephalitis 2013; 295 fatalities

[mixin]

Re: As Mystery Illness Stalks Its Young, India Intensifies Search for a Killer (NYTimes, July 14 2013)

This unknown virus is a real killer for the children. Too bad they have no internet there; they could live stream their meetings and invite experts from all over the world to collaborate.

I hope everyone reads the entire article...

Dr. Chauhan?s team has been given a rustic guesthouse next to a hospital here. There is no air-conditioning, the beds sag and the electricity is fitful. But there is an urgency to the doctors? work. They gather almost every night in a small dining room to update crude posters with information about each case and debate their theories. A new virus, an old bacteria, litchis, alcoholic tree sap, heat, pesticides, rats, bats and sand flies are among the suspected causes.

[NS1]

Re: As Mystery Illness Stalks Its Young, India Intensifies Search for a Killer (NYTimes, July 14 2013)

This unknown virus is a real killer for the children. Too bad they have no internet there; they could live stream their meetings and invite experts from all over the world to collaborate.

I hope everyone reads the entire article...

Solar panels and collapsible satellite uplinks. Dan Beuttner was communicating with off-the-shelf gear from jungles 20 years ago. Live-streaming is the way to go for collaboration.

[Emily]

Re: As Mystery Illness Stalks Its Young, India Intensifies Search for a Killer (NYTimes, July 14 2013)

From the NYT article:

?Both boys were fine until that night,? said Mr. Majhi, whose wife now cries constantly. ?They were eating, playing, wandering around ? same things they always do.?

But something the boys did, ate, drank, breathed in or encountered led to Chhotu?s death and Golu?s coma.

Here's a potential food risk:

bcn.in/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/16-322_341-Bihar.pdf

Despite a legal ban on trapping and selling wild birds, thousands
of waterfowl are illegally sold to private houses and roadside
eateries, and sometimes even taken to neighbouring districts like
Saharsa, Muzaffarpur, and Samastipur. Thousands of birds are
poisoned by mixing pesticide in fried rice and spreading it in the
foraging areas. This slow poison cripples the birds, which are then
easily picked up by poachers.

Phorate and carbofuran are both mentioned in articles as being used by bird poachers. Children are known to be more susceptible to these poisons than adults, and they also show different symptoms.


A seasonal pattern could apply to a pattern of pesticide poisoning as well as to a viral, bacterial or parasitic disease:
Indian Pediatrics 2002; 39: 102-104
Seasonal Pattern of Pediatric Poisoning in an Agricultural Belt of West Bengal