Warning: This article contains details some readers may find distressing At about 3am one morning in May, Bamita Markam began convulsing. The three-year-old had spent days with a high fever and angry red sores on her body. Her mother, Koushila, had first taken her to a doctor, who prescribed an ointment.
Bamita seemed to recover, then became ill again. A faith healer, called to the house in Matla village, gave her syrups and tablets. By dawn, Bamita was dead.
"She cried a lot," Koushila recalls. "She convulsed all night." The family tried to make her drink water. At one point she vomited blood.
They buried her in a jungle after midday. Bamita's death was one of at least 32 child deaths recorded since May in a cluster of remote villages in Balaghat district in India's Madhya Pradesh state, officials say. The victims ranged from babies just three or four months old to an 18-year-old, and most were Baiga, one of India's 75 "particularly vulnerable tribal groups", external.
Officials attribute the deaths to mainly measles and malaria, possibly aggravated by malnutrition and delays in treatment. They believe eight to 10 deaths were associated with measles, roughly another 10 with malaria, with several children suffering more than one infection. The precise cause of every death is less certain.
"I have never seen an outbreak like this. My father was a two-term lawmaker, and I have served three terms, but neither of us has seen so many children die in such a short time," Sanjay Uikey, who has represented the area since 2013, told me. But disease is only part of the story.
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