Muzaffarpur, Jun 16 (UNI) Amid large number of deaths of children suffering with Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), union health minister Dr Harshvardhan today took stock of the situation personally and announced a series of measures including setting up inter-disciplinary research centre, virology research institute and also 100-bed paediatric intensive care unit to check spread of the disease.
Dr Harshvardhan, after interacting with patients, their relatives and holding a meeting with doctors, superintendent of Sri Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH) and officials, told mediapersons here that he had first visited the area in 2014 and also discussed the problem with doctors and others. Even today, problems and nature of patients getting admitted to hospitals remained almost the same and opinions of experts differed on root cause of the disease, he added.
“I felt that most of the children falling sick with AES, suffered convulsions early in the morning and in some cases by 6 AM to 7 AM,” Dr Harshvardhan said adding it was noticed that most of them had slept empty stomach in night but after suffering stroke of convulsion, their chances of recovery were bright if rushed to hospitals in minimum possible time.
“We have decided to open an inter-disciplinary state of the art research centre to study the case from all aspects so that a solution could be found to check this menace,” union minister said adding that a virology research institute would also come up in Muzaffarpur besides setting up 100-bed paediatric intensive care unit. It would be exclusively for children as present arrangement in the hospital was not sufficient enough to face the challenge of such level of incidents of AES, he noted.
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