Kerala   

Public health machinery groping in the dark

Radhakrishnan Kuttoor

People start migrating to other places fearing epidemic

Harrowing time: Patients being treated at the fever ward of Pathanamthitta General Hospital.

PATHANAMTHITTA: The public health machinery appears to be groping in the dark when Central Travancore is in the grip of a fear psychosis with viral fever and chikungunya showing unusual manifestations.

High fever, severe pain in joints, ulcers, rashes, blisters, inflammation of joints and limbs and recurrence of the disease with more severity are the manifestations of the epidemic fever spreading in this part of the State. Though a once-infected person is considered to develop life-long immunity to chikungunya, a large number of recurring cases have been reported from the affected areas in Pathanamthitta district. Many affected people complain of prolonged secondary infection.

Doctors say that this is a viral arthralgic fever and is not fatal as such. But, it has been proved to be fatal in the case of patients having other chronic physical ailments. As many as 62 viral fever patients have died in Pathanamthitta alone in the past three months.

A high dose of paracetamol, with antibiotics in some cases, is the common drug administered to viral fever patients, mainly because of lack of proper diagnosis and absence of anti-viral drugs.

Though the margin of safety is high, paracetamol is a liver-toxic drug and its injudicious use may cause various other complications at a later stage, doctors here say.

The Government is yet to conduct a proper study on the clinical profile of the virus. So far, no expert team from the Centre or the State has made any fruitful interaction with local clinicians or the patients to identify the stream of virus causing the epidemic.

At least a few elderly people have started thinking of a temporary migration to safer destinations or to distant cities where their children or close relatives live.

Now it is vacation time for schools in the Gulf when many Malayali families visit their homes. And the health hazard attains a more serious social significance on this account.

Many elderly parents are insisting that their children working abroad should not visit the State this time.

An elderly couple in their late Seventies who have survived the viral infection complain of having its prolonged side effects even now. “We have asked our son in the U.S. not to make his trip this time. Instead, we have decided to join them at our flat in Mumbai,” says T.N.K. Nair at Keezhukara.

“Many families have cancelled their vacation trip to Kerala following scary reports on chikungunya spreading in the State,” say Rahul Ramakrishnan in Dubai and Bose Joesph in Bahrain.

“Nowadays, I take the morning daily with some sort of a psychological hesitation or, rather, fear as it carries scary reports on the epidemic with frozen faces of fever victims on the front page,” comments 75-yaer old Parackal Thomas of Maramon who was bedridden for about two weeks in June.

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