The political parties are more interested in confusing the residents rather than spreading awareness and eradicating the disease that could soon become an epidemic,' said T.N. Dhole, an expert on the subject at the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) here.

'With only 30-odd deaths swine flu has been declared an epidemic. It is just because it is spreading across the world and could easily spread from one country to another. But the government is not paying any heed to this (JE and VE) that has taken more lives in a small portion of Uttar Pradesh than the entire toll of swine flu,' he said.

Although there have been some actions by political parties on the disease, they have led to no or negligible results.

'Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi had visited the BRDMC hospital in 2005, after which the union health ministry imported Chinese vaccine which was administered to over 56 lakh (5.6 million) children. But the death rate didn't fall in the subsequent years,' R.N. Singh, a practising paediatrician in Gorakhpur, said.

Gandhi again visited Gorakhpur in 2008, this time with a team of doctors including two from US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta. The team studied the virus and its spread. The results of the study are still awaited. Gorakhpur is nearly 300 km from here.

The state government on its part has been continuously blaming the central government.

'We have sent many reports to the centre to help us in eradicating the disease. But they have failed to respond. But to the best of out capacity, we have provided every facility at the BRD Medical College to treat the patients,' state Health Minister Anant Kumar Mishra said.

'We had demanded the upgradation of the BRD Medical College and equip it with modern system to study encephalitis. But the state and the central governments opened one such centre in the SGPGIMS, Lucknow. Eastern Uttar Pradesh also needs various mobile teams of expert doctors to reach the patients immediately because according to my estimate only one out of a 100 children reaches the BRD Medical College,' Singh said.