The National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, has declined the request of the Karnataka state government to conduct ELISA tests for Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD), thus dealing a body blow to the state’s efforts to check the spread of the disease.

Instead, NIV held a 3-day training session where only two technicians could participate and now the health department feel that it is grossly inadequate. As a consequence, the health officials are forced to depend on the earlier methods of testing, and wait as much as three weeks for the test results to come. By comparison, the ELISA method yields a diagnosis within three days.

NIV with the technical association of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Department of Health and family welfare, government of Karnataka was instrumental in the identification of the virus, which caused the disease, its epidemiology, related research and subsequent development of an effective vaccine.

Meanwhile between January and June 2003, the health department reports that 283 cases were detected with KFD out of which 10 succumbed to the disease compared to last year’s 98 cases and 3 deaths.

In 2003, health department reported 902 cases of fever in Uttara Kannada, Dakshina Kannada, Shimoga and Chikmagalur out of which 283 were KFD cases and the remaining 619 cases were treated in hospitals.

The high incidence this year is attributed to the failure of monsoons and increased bamboo cutting activities in the region. The risk group are forest inhabitants and those engaged in forest occupation.

Hence the health department has chalked out an action plan to control the disease which is only found in Karnataka’s forest areas in the districts adjoining the Malnad region - Chikmagalur, Shimoga, Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada districts and not any where in the world. It has set-up four field stations in Sagar, Honnavar, Belathangady and Shimoga, headed, by a medical officer assisted by a health inspector.

The total budget allocation in 2003-2004 for the KFD programme by the State government is Rs. 78 lakh, out of which Rs.24 lakh is for immunisation programme. For the year 2002-2003, the health department purchased 1.30 lakh vaccines from the Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals [IAHVB], an autonomous body of the Karnataka government and utilised 1.15 doses of the KFD vaccine at a cost of Rs.20 plus 5 per cent tax.

Besides, the responsibility of producing the vaccine in bulk was entrusted to the Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals (IAH&VB), Bangalore because of its modern facility, which is well equipped to increase the vaccine production capacity.

Till then the vaccine was manufactured by the KFD laboratory in Shimoga, a district in central Karnataka where the production capacity was only 15,000 to 20,000 vaccines per batch compared to the one lakh per batch at the Bangalore unit.

There is no specific treatment to treat KFD except for supportive therapy, which is a course of antibiotics, cortisone and intravenous fluids. The only prevention for the disease is KFD vaccine apart from a massive awareness drive that needs to be conducted in the forests, Dr. C S Padma, joint director, CMD, directorate of health and family welfare, government of Karnataka, told this correspondent.