Passing a deadly buck
the air is oppressively still. Sultanpur is today a virtual ghost town. Thirteen km off Hisar, this small town has a population of about 5,000. The dung-spattered bylanes are mostly empty. Most of the residents have been bed-ridden since mid-July, when a mysterious fever struck Sultanpur and adjoining villages in Haryana. Both local doctors and specialists from Rohtak and Hisar have as yet failed to identify the cause of the ailment that is threatening to reach menacing proportions. The symptoms are suspiciously close to malaria, but no one can be certain that it is.
"At this moment what we can say for certain is that the ailment is a viral fever,' says Suresh Goel, senior medical officer ( smo ) posted at the nearby village of Ladwa. Justifying his statement, Goel said, "The patient has shivering fits but not as consistently as in malaria. Only a marginal number of the blood samples taken have tested positive.But the actual nature of the virus remains elusive." This statement was corroborated by a member of the mobile malaria action team that has been collecting specimens of water and has been studying blood samples in the affected areas since August 1. "Of the 111 slides studied on August 7, only one has tested positive for malaria."
The symptoms of the disease are the occurrence of very high fever, which peaks to around 105