Police in central India are searching for a man accused of running a tribal block’s health services for years on a forged medical degree. The block lies in Balaghat district, Madhya Pradesh state, where 32 children died between May and August.
Officials attribute the deaths mainly to measles and malaria, possibly worsened by malnutrition and delayed treatment, the BBC reported. The state government is now preparing a report for the Supreme Court on steps to improve healthcare and basic amenities in the district, officials said on October 11.
Dainik Jagran, a Hindi daily, reported on October 15 that police registered a first information report, the complaint that starts a criminal case in India, on October 10 against Shivkumar Pandey of Rewa district. Police say he obtained a contract job in 2008 with forged documents in the name of Dr Sunil Singh of Dewas, was posted to the Birsa community health centre in 2012 and became block medical officer in 2022. A block is a sub-district administrative unit, and Birsa is one of the two hit by the outbreak. The paper reports irregularities in vaccination, malaria control and medicine distribution during his tenure. Dr Paresh Uplap, then the district’s chief medical and health officer, sought an inquiry from the state medical council in April. Police have not found Pandey, and the allegations have not been tested in court.
A Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant has issued notice on a petition by Balaghat resident Ajab Lal Lihare. It asks the Centre, as India’s federal government is known, and the state to respond on compensation for families and on protecting surviving children from severe malnutrition and lack of drinking water. “What has happened is a very unfortunate thing,” the Chief Justice observed. The petition says a social worker warned authorities in January of an undiagnosed disease among Baiga children, and that medical camps held in January and February were abandoned early.
Most of the dead were Baiga, one of India’s 75 “particularly vulnerable tribal groups”, a government category for especially marginalised communities. A village council list seen by The Wire records the first deaths on May 18 in Matla village, on the edge of Kanha National Park. Ground Report, a news website, citing media reports, dates the first death on official records to June 26 in Bondari village. For some Baiga families, certain illnesses signal the arrival of a disease goddess who must be appeased through a ritual lasting days, and many fear that treating the child before it ends could prove fatal. Mahasingh Parte, a landless farm labourer who lost two children, followed a faith healer’s instructions. “He said don’t take them to hospital,” he told the BBC.
Three-year-old Bamita Markam began convulsing at about 3am one morning in May and was dead by dawn. Rain had turned the tracks to mud, and her family had no vehicle. “If I was able to take her to hospital she might have lived,” her mother Koushila told the BBC. The BBC puts the nearest state hospital, in Birsa, about 70 km away, while The Wire says the hospital Parte did not use was 25 km from his hut.
Officials say they grasped the scale only in July. On July 22, Parshuram Dhurwey, head of Adori village council, told then sub-divisional magistrate Arpit Gupta, a senior local administrator, that three children had died in Bondari village. “Until then, we thought the fever was just seasonal flu,” Gupta told the Indian Express. Teams found at least one sick child in each of Bondari’s 103 homes. Doctors say several infections struck malnourished children together, the BBC reported, and the cause of each death remains uncertain.
The toll is disputed. Ground Report reported in September that the administration counted six deaths on August 11 and more in the weeks after. Dr Shatrughan Dahiya, chief medical and health officer since September 7, puts the official toll at 32. Sanjay Uikey, the local legislator from the opposition Congress party, says 43, and The Wire reports that at least one child’s death never entered official records. The Indian Express says the victims were aged one to 13, while the BBC says they ranged from infants to an 18-year-old.
The Indian Express reports that the outbreak also reached Gond families. In Mohanpur village, Kajal Saiyyam, 10, a top student who wanted to become a doctor, fell ill on August 23. Her family says no health worker visited, and her teacher says they took the fever lightly because Kajal had survived malaria three times before. On August 27, with no mobile signal to call an ambulance, someone fetched an autorickshaw and the family paid Rs 1,500 for the 28 km to a private hospital in Balaghat, where she was diagnosed with malaria and ventilated. She was referred to Gondia in neighbouring Maharashtra state, 44 km away, and died early on August 29, the last name on the health department’s list. Her father sold and mortgaged his wife’s jewellery to meet bills of about Rs 90,000. Her last words to him were “Papa, I am alive.”
A national outbreak response team found Balaghat had no public health laboratory, no epidemiologist or microbiologist in post, and disease surveillance in the hands of a data operator, the Indian Express reported. Its figures show 72 posts of ASHA workers, frontline community health workers, vacant in the district, along with 36 posts of anganwadi workers and 83 of helpers. Anganwadis are government-run centres giving young children nutrition and pre-school care. Take-home food rations for children and for pregnant and nursing women had not reached these areas for over six months, officials said. Dr Dahiya told the Indian Express, “There are gaps in manpower which we are working on.”
Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of Parliament, visited bereaved families on October 1 and accused the central and state governments of abandoning tribal people. He said about half the families had yet to receive compensation. Reports say Rs 4 lakh (400,000 rupees) has been released to each bereaved family. The Congress has demanded the resignation of state Health Minister Rajendra Shukla.
Health teams have since screened 49,988 people, identified 8,296 patients, hospitalised 745 and vaccinated 40,848 children, the Indian Express reports. The state suspended the district’s vaccination and malaria control officers. The outbreak has subsided, the BBC reported in late September, with officials saying the last death came more than two weeks before their assessment.
