The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is joining the battle on unknown and deadly type of encephalitis that plagues children in Northeast India annually.  It’s happening in one of the most impoverished areas of the massively overpopulated nation.  

“This outbreak happens every year, and we have not been able to identify the cause or link even a single factor responsible,” said Doctor. L. S. Chauhan, the director of the National Center for Disease Control in India.

Panic-stricken parents start showing up at hospitals and clinics with their children every May.  The children suffer the same symptoms, fever and convulsions and then coma.  Hours earlier, the kids seem fine. 

Doctors are frustrated because they don’t know what’s causing it.  Tests for known forms of meningitis and encephalitis always come back negative.  They’re left to calm the convulsions and keep the children hydrated, and to hope their patient doesn’t fall into the 33 percent death rate for what is official known as Acute Encephalitis Syndrome.

It first appeared in Muzaffarpur in 1995 and has come back yearly.  It always ends with the onset of the monsoon rains.  In recent years it’s spreading to surrounding areas.

The CDC is training and advising an elite medical team from India’s Epidemic Intelligence Service.  The extremely difficult work will involve looking for a cause (virus, bacteria or toxin), but also for a possible carrier (insects, rats, livestock or bats) or even for a vehicle (sand flies, drink or fruit).