Gaya, Sept. 19: Patients suffering from acute encephalitis syndrome who have been admitted to Anugrah Narayan Magadh Medical College and Hospital (ANMMCH) have to contend with not only the virus of the deadly disease but also with shortage of facilities and absence of doctors at the health hub.

Sources said more than 122 acute encephalitis syndrome patients had been admitted to the ANMMCH since August 23 this year, of which 31 had succumbed to the disease. However, the health hub is yet to have a proper team of expert medicos to treat the patients.

A team from New Delhi, led by Dr Chelani, head of department, paediatric, Safdarjang Hospital, had visited ANMMCH last month. Bihar health minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey, health department principal secretary Amarjeet Sinha and a team of experts from Rajendra Memorial Research Institute had also paid a visit to the hospital.

There has been, however, no improvement in the resources of ANMMCH.

The sanctioned posts of two associate professors, one assistant professor, four senior resident doctors and one medical officer are vacant.

On Sinha’s direction, a team of four doctors has been deputed at ANMMCH. However, the team comprises a recent passout, an intern and a senior resident doctor. Also, the team visits the hospital only thrice a week.

Civil surgeon Dilip Kumar has also made available four doctors for ANMMCH. However, none of them is a child specialist.

A technical team from the Centre visited ANMMCH on September 17 and 18. They also visited a number of villages, including Siyarbhuka under Belaganj block, Adarsh Nagar under Bodhgaya block and a village in Wazirganj block. They collected mosquitoes from the villages.

Earlier, the team members also had a meeting with the ANMMCH officials and the doctors, including superintendent Sitaram Prasad, principal Sohan Prasad Chaudhary, the head of department, paediatrics, Ajay Kishore Ravi and others. They suggested that the hospital should co-ordinate with other departments of the hospital to ensure better treatment of the patients.

The team members also collected blood samples and the cerebrospinal fluid of the children admitted at ANMMCH. Pathological tests of the samples will be done in Delhi. The samples have also been sent to National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune.

Ravi told The Telegraph: “Only IgM capture test is being done at the microbiology department here. This is the basic test for encephalitis. At NIV, Pune, reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction test is done to get direct evidence of the encephalitis disease.”

He added that if one child was detected with Japanese encephalitis, it meant that more than 500 children were suffering from undetected infection.