PATNA: Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdown to curb its spread, the Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) seems to have returned in North Bihar as a second toddler, age 3, died on Monday at SKMCH in Muzaffarpur.
The first death of a male kid, 2, with symptoms developed akin to Acute Encephalitis Syndrome, was reported on March 30 at SKMCH. Confirming this, superintendent of SKMCH Dr SK Shahi said that four other children were also admitted at SKMCH.
According to Sukhlal Sahani, father of a twin sisters namely Sukhi Kumari and Mausam Kumari, both the sisters were brought at SKMCH on April 24 for treatment when their health started deteriorating after initial treatment by an unregistered rural quack.
Sukhi Kumari breathed her last on Monday while her twin sister Mausam Kumari is under critical condition at SKMCH besides three other children.
The deceased along with her sister had taken a bath in a rural pond on April 23 after playing in a nearby field and at night, both of them started developing symptoms akin to Acute Encephalitis Syndrome and were taken to the Anganwadi.
Sources said that father of deceased is a daily wage labourer at a brick kiln while her mother works in agriculture field in the village Rauahanpur.
Raushanpur has no previous history of AES reported earlier.
In 2019, nearly 150 children had died due to AES in Muzaffarpur area besides other adjoining districts.
Meanwhile, officials of Muzaffarpur district administration, led by DM Chandrashekar Singh, have adopted 196 panchayats of Muzaffarpur to prevent the outbreak of AES and have started monitoring awareness and sanitization drives in each of the adopted panchayats.
From December 2019, training of health workers and awareness drives through various modes of communication including wall writings are being taken out across the district.
A district control room of AES has also been started for round the clock service and new ambulances have been made available to ferry the patients from areas to SKMCH.