A regular press release from the U.S. Embassy got me back to the issue of bugs. This time to mosquito-borne Japanese Encephalitis which is crippling over 5000 people, mostly children, in India every year and killing close to 700.

{credit}Jim Peacock/Photodisc/Macmillan Mexico{/credit}

Like their counterparts in many Asian countries, Japanese encephalitis has become a pain in the neck for public health administrators in India. Despite the introduction of a vaccination programme about six years back, many states (worst hit Assam, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal) continue to experience large seasonal outbreaks. One such case in point is eastern Uttar Pradesh which experiences outbreaks every rainy season. And funnily enough, the reason behind these outbreaks are still a mystery.

What should be the public health surveillance priorities for India? Which way should research in this area be steered to stop these seasonal outbreaks? What exactly is triggering these outbreaks? These questions will be on top of the agenda for more than 80 international experts getting together in Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, today. The occasion — a three-day workshop on acute encephalitis at the Sanjay Gandhi Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences co-sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Vector Borne Disease Control Program (NVBDCP).

NVBDCP’s surveillance and control of JE monitors the vaccination and vector control programme, which has been lauded in the past for achieving a significant drop in the number of JE afflicted. Most of the research on the viral causes of JE is spearheaded by the National Institute of Virology of ICMR. The Indian government also has an Acute Encephalitis Task Force, comprising members of different governmental programmes that work specifically on encephalitis.

The meeting at Lucknow is expected to establish new research protocols including a sentinel site surveillance platform to determine the primary causes of the recurring outbreaks. There’s also talk of a collaboration between CDC and the Indian government to reduce the spread of acute encephalitis in India.

Let’s hope scientists and policy makers can get together to prevent these outbreaks and tackle JE with the same enthusiasm as polio.