Overview
- The cluster, reported April 1–5, involved five children aged two to four from Ghata and Lalpura who developed sudden fever with vomiting and died within about a day.
- Specialist teams from RNT Medical College in Udaipur and the state health directorate are running door-to-door checks, collecting child samples across 561 families, and carrying out fogging and anti-larval work.
- Investigators suspect viral encephalitis and have flagged a Chandipura-like virus as a possibility, with confirmatory testing now underway at the National Institute of Virology in Pune.
- Officials reported three further child deaths elsewhere in the district over the past two days with gastrointestinal symptoms and said these appear unrelated to the original cluster pending lab reports.
- Diagnosis has been hampered by families declining autopsies and long referral routes from remote villages, which delayed care and limited the clinical evidence doctors could gather.