Lucknow, October 7:

The death toll from Japanese encephalitis in northern India has crossed the 1,000 mark, making it the most fatal outbreak of the illness in nearly two decades, an official said today. Nearly all the dead were children.

Some 300 more people were battling the illness in hospital, OP Singh, Director General of Health Services, said in Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with 180 million people and one of its poorest. “At least 15 more children have died of this mosquito-borne disease, taking the toll to 1,015,” Singh said, adding a number of the children in hospital were in serious condition. Doctors say they have been struggling to treat the children in deplorable conditions, with two patients to a bed in many cases. They complain of a lack of medicines, oxygen and staff.

“Sumit has not opened his eyes, not spoken a word. Please save him,” implored the boy’s mother, Bhagwati, who goes by one name, cradling her comatose son in her lap in hospital. She said his farm labourer father was working in their home village nearby earning money for his sons treatment at King George’s Medical Hospital, Lucknow’s premier healthcare institute. Paint was peeling from the walls of the hospital that stank of urine. “The hospital has only three ventilators in the childrens ward,” said hospital chief administrator Dr Ramakant. “We desperately need more — we’ve asked for seven more ventilators so these children can be saved. The government has given us only assurances, not ventilators.”

Health workers say a lack of vaccination and other preventive measures were to blame for the scale of the outbreak. The disease is transmitted from pigs to humans via mosquitoes during the monsoon rains from June to September.

“This is a man-made catastrophe,” said microbiologist Dr TN Dhole at the Sanjay Gandhi Post-Graduate Institute in Lucknow. “A little bit of planning could have saved these children’s lives.”

The latest deaths came amid mounting opposition outrage over the state government’s failure to prevent the outbreak and lack of help to tackle it.