Acute Encephalitis Syndrome in India – Japanese Encephalitis, Polluted Water and Malnutrition

Abstract

Acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) has grabbed much attention as a public health problem in the recent years. The earlier major outbreaks of acute encephalitis in the country from 1973 to 2007 were mainly attributed to Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus and case fatality rate of over 33% were reported. The earlier efforts undertaken to control mortality due to JE outbreaks were in developing effective clinical case management strategy, vaccination attempts using mouse brain derived inactivated JE vaccine in the endemic areas, sentinel surveillance at referral hospitals and isolation of amplifier host. The more recent efforts undertaken by the Government of India (GoI) to prevent JE in the identified endemic districts of the country has been JE vaccination coverage under the universal immunization programme (UIP) using a single dose live attenuated JE vaccine containing SA-14-14-2 strain