Malkangiri Collector admits 6-yr old JE infected girl to hosp

As the Japanese Encephalitis (JE) situation remained alarming in Odisha's Malkangiri, the District Collector personally took a six-year-old girl suffering from the disease to the hospital from her unwilling parents.

Shattered by the death of their two-year-old daughter and four-year-old son due to the killer disease earlier, the tribal parents had resisted any move to get their ailing daughter admitted to the hospital for treatment.

However, District Collector K Sudarshan Chakrabarthy went to village Daniguda and took the girl to the hospital after a lot of persuasion.

The local Sarpanch and Anganwadi and ASHA workers also impressed upon the parents of the JE-afflicted girl on the need to admit their daughter to the hospital.
 

The Collector assured the girl's parents, Sudarshan Padiami and Irme Padiami, that all necessary measures would be taken to ensure proper medical treatment for their daughter at the district headquarters hospital here.

Doctors at the hospital said the girl was showing signs of improvement after being admitted to the medical facility.

The parents of the girl were reluctant to take her to the hospital as they appeared to have lost confidence after losing their two children to the disese, officials said.

Meanwhile, the toll due to the dreaded disease mounted to 76 today following the death of another child at the district headquarters hospital, officials said.

Unconfirmed sources, however, put the death toll due to JE at 89.