Kashyap’s case is one of the first to have been reported in India. (IE)
A 12-year-old Hunga Ram Kashyap who has been found to have four malaria strains in his blood, his case has been documented by American scientific journal Public Library of Sciences. Reportedly, Kashyap’s case is one of the first to have been reported in India. In Bastar, it’s not uncommon for people to live the tenuous line between life and death. Now 14, Kashyap has had malaria twice and his family has also been a witness of Maoist attack. His family has been chased out of their homes since they defied a diktat levied by the Maoist and sent Kashyap to school, Indian Express reported.
But Kashyap doesn’t seem to have been affected by what happened since he laughs as he narrates his story. Darbha itself is representative of the Bastar narrative — it is heavily forested and the Primary health centre is less than 5 km from the site of the 2013 attack on a Congress convoy by Maoists, leaving 28 dead, Indian Express reported. Besides this Dharba has been suffering from another problem, Malaria. In July 2015, the National Institute of Rural Tribal Health (NIRTH), under the Indian Council of Medical Research, set up a malaria clinic at the primary health centre in Kashyap’s village. Within a month from its set up, Kashyap was brought in at the small, one-room malaria clinic, barely able to walk and was tested for malaria. After being tested positive for two types of malaria bacteria, Kashyap was kept at the Darbha clinic.
Dr Sanjay Basak, the then district malaria officer of Bastar district said, ” We had never before seen a case with all four strands in the bloodstream.” Thus, in the beginning of August 2015, slides with Kashyap’s blood on them travelled across the world, including the US. While NIRTH confirmed that all four strands were present, this was verified again by the World Health Organisation.The PLOS paper does not mention Hunga’s name but calls it the first such case in India.
