World Health Organisation has said it was ready to provide all assistance to encephalitis-hit Bihar.
Talking to reporters here, WHO India representative Nata Menabde said that while WHO was ready to provide all assistance for establishing what the virus was, it had not been approached by the government yet.
“We don’t have any specific project at present, but we are open to providing assistance whenever the government approaches us. We have all the expertise,” Menabde told reporters.
She also said that the WHO was providing some assistance based on requests by the Bihar government.
Menabde stressed on including Japanese Encephalitis (JE) in routine immunization.
“JE vaccine should be included in regular universal vaccination programme,” she said.
An encephalitis infection which has already claimed the life of over 200 children and affected nearly 600 in Bihar as per official data, has symptoms of encephalitis but is not Japanese Encephalitis.
Pune-based National Institute of Virology (NIV) had Thursday said that the disease spreading through Bihar called Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), is not Japanese encephalitis. It is yet to be established what the infection actually is.