Haveli Kharagpur, Bihar: At the ground zero of the cerebral malaria outbreak in Bihar, six persons have died and 650 people affected all within a block of 100 villages in the Munger district.
Gayatri Devi's two-year-old daughter is the fifth of her family to get cerebral malaria. The others, including her eight-year-old son, were diagnosed at a private clinic 15 days ago.
"It has happened to my family year after year. Government help at this hospital started only 10 days ago, and I had already spent Rs 6,000 on my family by then," said Gayatri Devi.
A team of five doctors have worked non-stop for 10 days now, coping with scores of new cases each day. Eight doctors who had come from Delhi for assistance went back saying things are getting back to normal. But these doctors are still struggling.
"We could do with more doctors. It's easy to say things but five of us have to go out, collect samples, diagnose and treat," said Dr Jitendra Chowdhary, general surgeon.
The good news is that there are just 16 new cerebral malaria cases today, down from the 69 on Sunday, and none of them severe.
The Bihar government says it will depute two more doctors here by Tuesday, to cope with the rush but questions will remain, whether the government could have done more in terms of getting DDT sprayed in the area on time, and the like, so that things would not have come to such a pass.