Experts Probe Virus in India

Health experts have begun investigating a mysterious virus that has killed nearly 100 children and sickened hundreds more people over the last two months in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, officials said Saturday.

The children, most of them younger than 12, died after what doctors and officials described as a high fever brought on by mosquito bites.

Doctors said children and older people were more susceptible because their immune systems were weaker.

Two teams of doctors and public health specialists from the federal and state governments have started studying the outbreak in Saharanpur, the worst affected district, said Navtej Singh, a district official.

But authorities were divided over what the virus was. Some patients have shown symptoms similar to those of Japanese encephalitis, but others have not.

Japanese encephalitis is spread from pigs to humans through mosquito bites. It attacks the central nervous system, causing flu-like symptoms, vomiting, paralysis and sometimes death.

At least 60 children have died in Saharanpur, said Chandan L. Choudhury, a district official. Children have also died in the neighboring districts of Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad and Meerut.

Hundreds of children die each year from diseases borne by mosquitoes and flies in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state in size and population, because of poverty and lack of hygiene and education.