A Mysterious Illness in India
By: Rhea Mahajan
The headlines have been startling to say the least: more than 500 people sickened by a mysterious illness in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and doctors can’t figure out what’s causing it. This news has spread across India and the world in a viral fashion, not just because it bears a likeness to the initial reports from nearly one year ago of a “mysterious pneumonia-like virus” in the Chinese city of Wuhan. That illness, as we all know, turned into the Covid-19 pandemic, which is still raging across and has killed over 1.5 million people in its wake. But in Andhra Pradesh, the situation is starting to look less dire than the corona virus disease—though it is just as troubling. So, what is this new, mystery illness that’s attacking south India? The short answer is: we don’t know. Doctors haven’t been able to make much headway in identifying what the illness is or where it came from.
So far, here’s what we do know about this mysterious illness that is sickening people left and right, at random, in Andhra Pradesh.
The illness was first detected early Saturday morning on January 2nd in Eluru, an ancient city in Andhra Pradesh that’s world famous for its hand-woven products. “People started convulsing without any warning”, said Geeta Prasadini, the Andhra director of public health. Since then, a wide range of symptoms have been reported in 546 patients; of these 546, only 148 victims are still being treated in hospitals, the rest have received treatment, recovered, and returned home. It seems these “episodes”, as they’re being dubbed, only last for about 2-3 days. Patients have reported symptoms ranging from nausea, seizures, dizziness, and loss of consciousness. So far this disease has claimed only one life, a 45-year old man named Sridhar who was hospitalized with symptoms resembling epilepsy but died unexpectedly on the evening of January 3. Even after performing an autopsy, Geeta Prasadini and her team were not able to shed any light on the cause of death or origin of disease.
Teams of experts have arrived in Eluru from India’s top scientific institutes. Different theories have been suggested and are being tested continuously. Initially, the hypothesis blamed contaminated water. But the chief minister’s office confirmed that people who don’t use the municipal water supply have also fallen ill and that initial tests of the city water supply have indicated no presence of any harmful chemicals. The most recent hypothesis is contamination in food by pesticides. The theory is that people ate tainted vegetables covered in pesticides made of organic compounds containing phosphorus. Unfortunately, this is only mostly an assumption based on the fact that such pesticides are commonly used in the area, not on any concrete evidence.
What is the truly confounding part is that there doesn’t seem to be any common link amongst the hundreds that have fallen ill. All of the patients have tested negative for Covid-19, which rules out the pandemic making them sick, nor has anyone tested positive for any other common viral disease such as dengue, chikungunya, or herpes. Furthermore, they all live in different areas; none of the sick are related to each other; they’re all of different age groups, including about 70 children, but very of them are elderly. The multitude of differences between each patient makes it even more difficult to figure out the cause and identify the illness.
In conclusion, no one really knows anything about this mysterious illness. Thankfully only one life has been taken so far, and doctors hope to continue their success rate of short patient hospitalization periods. In the mean, top-notch researchers, scientists, and doctors, all of India’s best and brightest will be working toward identifying and eradicating this mysterious illness in Andhra Pradesh.