“Our team collected blood samples,” said Nirmal Majhi, chairman of AITMCDC. “Five people turned out to be kala-azar positive. We have contacted their families so that they can come to Kolkata and get themselves treated at the School of Tropical Medicines.”

According to local sources, around 40 people died in the last two years due to kala-azar. Seven of them, some of them children, died in the last two months. But the health department, they allege, never take the deaths seriously, dismissing them as results of anaemia and high fever.

The deaths of Babushona Mandi (7) and Shonai Mandi (7) on June 6 and June 10, however, stirred the locals into protest and forced the district health department to take action.

Dismissing the reports of 40 kala-azar deaths, the Chief Medical Officer (Health) of Birbhum, Ashish Mallick, however, admitted that in a recent door-to-door blood sample collection conducted by the health department, six people from Golamighata were found kala-azar positive.

“It is alarming that six people from one village alone have been suffering from this deadly disease,” he said. “But, we have adequate doctors and there is no need to set up any special unit for this.”

Among the kala-azar patients, there is 19-year old Sunil Tudu, whose father, aunt and sister had died suffering in the disease in the last six months. “We have no evidence that these deaths were kala-azar deaths, they might have been normal fever cases or something else. There is nothing to bother about,” the CMOH said.