Gorakhpur:
On Sunday, five-year-old Mahima died of Japanese Encephalitis. She was the 219th victim in Uttar Pradesh since January 2010.
Since 2005, over 3,000 children have died of Japanese Encephalitis in the state. Experts believe the reason behind is a failed vaccine drive.
Every year, the Centre is unable to provide required number of vaccines on time. And whatever little arrives, even that is not fully used by the state.
''Yes, it has been some sort of failure," admits the state's Additional Director (Health), UK Srivastav.
'If the Centre could not provide the vaccine, isn't it the duty of the state to source it? The vaccines cost barely 30-odd crores, which is nothing compared to the thousands of crores spent on building memorials. Or should the government simply let people die,'' says Dr. RMD Agarwal, a paediatrician and a BJP MLA.
The first bad strike of Japanese Encephalitis came in the 2005 monsoons. To stem it, in 2006, a vaccination drive was introduced but reports suggest that only 35 per cent of children were actually immunized. For the next three years, no child got the vaccine.
And now in 2010, as the diseases returns with a vengeance, the vaccines the Centre had rushed to UP turned out to be of such poor quality that they were completely unusable.
The shocking negligence and complete apathy by the Centre and the state government has created a situation where hundreds of families keep walking in through the emergency doors of Gorakhpur Medical College and walking out. Many children have died, many others have become disabled for life.
The next vaccination drive is planned for November. It is now time the state and Centre stop playing politics with the lives of little children and put their efforts to check the spread of the deadly disease.