PUNE/GUWAHATI: Maharashtra reported its fifth death linked to Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) and Assam its first on Saturday as a continued uptick in hospitalisations across Pune took the metropolitan region’s caseload to 149, up by nine overnight.
A 60-year-old man from Nanded Gaon treated at Pune’s Sassoon Hospital since Jan 16 died around 12.30am, hours before a 17-year-old girl admitted to Guwahati’s privately-run Pratiksha Hospital on Jan 21 became the first confirmed GBS death outside Maharashtra since the outbreak there.The teenager was on ventilator support for 11 days.
Two suspected GBS casualties in Kolkata last week – both boys, 10 and 17 – are still to be officially confirmed.
Concern over the Pune cluster’s continued growth was exacerbated by an increase in the number of patients in a critical condition. Health department data showed ICU admissions spiking from 45 until Friday to 83. The number of patients on ventilator support stood at 28, up from 18 the previous day.
This was offset by some encouraging news in the form of hospitals discharging 38 GBS patients. GBS, which triggers a range of challenging but treatable neurological and other complications, generally doesn’t occur in clusters like the one in Pune.
The city’s latest casualty in the outbreak succumbed to respiratory failure with autonomic dysfunction and quadriplegia – both complications arising from GBS – along with hypertension, an official at Sassoon Hospital said. “The patient was from Khadakwasla, one of the areas in Nanded Gaon that has reported several GBS cases. He had diarrhoea for seven days before coming to the hospital. By the time he arrived, he was in a critical condition with quadriplegia (paralysis of the arms and legs),” the official said.
The deceased had sought treatment at smaller hospitals before coming to Sassoon in a critical condition.
BJ Medical College and Sassoon Hospital’s dean, Dr Eknath Pawar, said, “We discharged five GBS patients on Saturday. Sassoon has 27 GBS patients. Over the next 2-3 days, another 10 patients are likely to be discharged.”
Villages newly added to the Pune Municipal Corporation belt have been affected the most, accounting for 82 GBS cases so far. Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation has 17 patients.
The search for what triggered the outbreak hit a hurdle when water samples tested for Campylobacter jejuni, found in stool samples of at least five patients, were found free of the bacterium. On Friday, 15 samples collected from private tankers that supply water to neighbourhoods reporting GBS cases were found to have high levels of coliform and E. coli contamination. Fourteen of the samples tested positive for E.coli, with counts exceeding 16 per 100ml. Safe drinking water should ideally have zero E.coli.