Kerala has no lab to track virus

DENGUE UPDATE

Kerala may boast of good health indicators like low infant mortality but is clueless when faced with a viral epidemic. The state has no facility to test viral infections.

So while various estimates put the number of deaths this year at 40 to 60, the government has been blaming mosquito-borne viral and non-fatal fever, chikungunya. Experts say the causes could be leptospirosis or dengue, both of which have been hitting the state almost every year.

Top virologist and former head of the department of virology at Christian Medical College, Vellore, T Jacob John said Kerala might be in the grip of leptospirosis. The state, however, has no means to diagnose the cause of the deaths as it does not have a virology testing facility.

Neighbouring Tamil Nadu has at least four facilities to diagnose viral infections like chikungunya, Dr John told Business Standard here.

"It is impossible to assign a cause to the deaths. The outcome is misclassification. This is the reality of Kerala. It includes poorly staffed and under-funded government hospitals and private facilities where there is no quality control,'' he said.

He said the state health minister was justified in attributing the deaths to chikungunya as she was merely saying what she had been told by the health system.

For the last two months, the Kerala government has been playing a guessing game. On Tuesday, Union Health Minister Ramadoss ruled out chikungunya in Kerala, for which he was criticised by Chief Minister VS Achuthananthan.

The chief minister believes ruling out chikungunya is not right unless teams from the National Institute of Communicable Diseases give their report.

Dr John said the crisis was to be blamed on previous governments, which never bothered to set up a testing unit even when they had an opportunity.

During the previous LDF government, the state started a project to set up a virology centre in Alappuzha district, from where most deaths are being reported.

"I even got them grants but the then health minister sat on the files, the funds lapsed and the subsequent UDF government closed the project for good,'' says Dr John, who was the honorary director of the unit.

The government probably felt that since the state's health indicators were as good as that of the US, there was no need for a virology unit, John said.

The virologist also had a package for elimination of leptospirosis, called Kerala Leptospirosis Elimination Programme. This was also dumped by the UDF Government, he said.

Six more deaths were reported from Alappuzha district today, where a team of the WHO and central experts made an on-the-spot study.