MINGORA: Four children have died while 12 others are fighting with a mysterious disease that has broken out in a remote village of Bahrain tehsil of Swat.

According to the relatives and parents of the children, the illness which could not be identified by the doctors had broken out in Ghon Pattey village of Mankyal valley a week ago. They said 16 children were shifted to the tehsil hospital in Madyan but there were no adequate medical facilities there due to which four children died.

“Due to lack of medical facilities my six-year-old nephew Sarbaz Khan died in the hospital the other day,” said Abdullah Jan, adding three-year-old Salman, ten-month-old Noman and one-year-old Yusra, also belonging to the same village, also died in the hospital. The parents of the sick children claimed it was measles, but the doctors said it was some mysterious disease.

Bahrain Tehsil Nazim Habibullah Saqib, who helped the parents shift the remaining 12 children to Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital, said the children suffered from fever, but the doctors in Madyan hospital did not understand it.

“We demand of the government to make immediate medical arrangements to tackle the outbreak,” he said.

However, district health officer Dr Ghulam Subhani said a special team had been sent to the area to investigate the disease. “We have already got the blood samples of the sick children and sent them to labs for investigation to identify the disease. We have also started taking measures in the area to stop the disease from further spread,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2018