World Bank, Gates Foundation to assist Bihar combat Kala Azar

India's impoverished state, Bihar, caught in the vice–like grip of the dreaded kala azar (black fever), will be able to breathe easier with the World Bank and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announcing their keenness to fund the state's Kala Azar Control and Eradication Programme.

With 31 out of 38 districts of Bihar reportedly in the grip of deadly kala azar, the state government has announced that over 25,000 persons were suffering from the dreaded fever.

Former Union Health Minister and senior BJP leader C.P.Thakur, however, claimed that the actual figure was more than the official one.

According to Thakur, ever since kala azar was first detected in Bihar in 1977, till June this year over 7 lakh people had registered their names in different hospitals and health centres in the state to get treated for this disease.

The Union Health Ministry reportedly plans to eradicate kala azar from the country by 2010.

It is learnt from the Health Department that about 12 lakh people, mostly poor, across the country are affected by kala azar.

A senior official of the state Health Department said that while dengue deaths in Delhi became a national issue, the deaths due to kala azar, which had been regularly reported in rural Bihar, hardly made any news.

"The main victims of this disease belong to poor Dalit castes, like Musahars, and other backwards due to their unhygienic living conditions," he explained.

Sources in the government disclosed that the Bill Gates Foundation expressed its willingness to join hands with the World Bank to take part in the Kala Azar Control and Eradication Programme in Bihar.

A World Bank team is expected to visit the worst kala azar–hit districts of Muzaffarpur and Vaishali in north Bihar shortly to review the situation.

Recently, the Vector control programme chief of the Bill Gates Foundation Ket Alteman visited some areas in Jehanabad to make an on–the–spot survey of the situation.

Ironically, for over 10 years the blame game over kala azar was going on between the Centre and the state government. Both blamed each other for failure to check the disease.

Kala azar, medically known as Visceral leishmaniasis, is a vector–borne disease and is characterised by fever, weight loss, swelling of spleen and liver and anemia that could lead to cardiovascular complications.