Japanese Encephalitis deaths cast shadow on Gorakhpur polls

GORAKHPUR: "Ek raat usko achanak se bukhar aaya. Aath paath bakne lagi thi. Ungli uthake kehti thi ki koi a raha hai. Phir kuch din baad khatam ho gayi (She got fever all of a sudden one night, began speaking incoherently. She would see apparations and say someone was coming to get her. She died a few days later)," said Kiran, as she wiped her tears with the end of her sari.

Kiran's daughter, Manisha, was only 11 when she died of Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in Gorakhpur's infamous Manbela locality, barely a few km from BRD Medical College that is claimed to be the frontrunner in fighting JE and acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) manifested in the form of brain fever. With every third house that one crosses in Manbela, there is the shadow of JE hovering over it.

And, this deathly shadow also hovers over the elections to the Gorakhpur Municipal Corporation, to be held on Wednesday, to decide the fate of candidates who would then be responsible to fight one of the big causes of the deadly disease - piling garbage and choked drains all across the city. And, JE is a mosquito-borne disease.

The city has also not forgotten the tragedy that rocked it four months ago when as many as 32 children died in a span of just 48 hours at the BRD Medical College.

As Gorakhpur Municipal Corporation (GMC) elections draw closer and regular movement of hopeful corporator and mayoral candidates with their cavalcade on automobiles run through the many semi-rural areas of Gorakhpur, voters' sentiment is despondent, bordering on belligerence, the spectre of "dimagi bukhar" weighing on their minds.