Fourteen more children succumbed to a yet-to-be-identified illness at Sri Krishna Medical College in Muzaffarpur of Bihar on Monday, taking the toll to 33, while the number of admitted kids rose to 80.

Until Sunday, state officials would attribute the deaths to acute encephalitis syndrome (AES), but state health minister Mangal Pandey changed the terminology on Monday to hypoglycemia – which is essentially low glucose level.

This correspondent spoke to a number of parents who repeatedly affirmed that their wards had eaten before they took ill which means the glucose level in their blood could not have plunged to alarming levels.

Despite blaming AES for several deaths this summer as well as in past years, officials never succeeded in making a confirmed diagnosis, said a local activist. "Now, they have come up with hypoglycemia."

The deaths spike during the summer, with children showing symptoms like fever, vomiting that are similar to encephalitis, a viral infection. So far, the doctors at the medical college have been treating the kids symptomatically.

—Zee Media Newsroom