PATNA: A three-year-old boy, who had symptoms akin to Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), breathed his last at Sri Krishna Memorial College and Hospital in Bihar's Muzaffarpur district on Sunday evening.
The toddler was admitted in a precarious condition in the SKMCH on Saturday from Baji Bujirag village under the limits of Sakra police station when he developed the symptoms akin to AES.
According to Dr SK Shahi, superintendent of SKMCH, a village quake had given the initial treatment to the boy in his village.
"When the condition deteriorated further, the kid's father brought him to the SKMCH on Saturday wherein the boy was kept on ventilators", Dr. Shahi told the media.
This was the first death of a child due to AES in 2020.
One minor girl is also under treatment at SKMCH.
She has been brought from East Champaran district with similar symptoms.
In 2019, more than 200 children had died with AES symptoms in Muzaffarpur based SKMCH and other hospitals.
The outbreak of AES, which is called colloquially chmaki bukkhar (chamki fever), takes place in Muzaffarpur since 1996 almost every year.
The 99% of children, who had died so far due to the fever, belonged to extremely poor families surviving in interiors of Muzaffarpur and other adjoining districts.
In 2019, medical teams after conducting a survey study had blamed the malnutrition as one of the reasons for the children deaths as almost all the victims of this viral fever were found malnourished.
Meanwhile, Bihar CM Nitish Kumar had directed the officials of the health department to make elaborate arrangements and ready the paediatrics intensive care units.