Doctors Suspect Rare Disease Might Have Afflicted Indian Child
Dr. Narayan Babu, left, inspecting baby Rahul lying next to his mother Rajeshwari Karnan, right, at Kilpauk Medical Hospital in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.
When 23-year-old Rajeshwari Karnan delivered a boy in May in Nedimozhinur village in Villipuram district of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, she and her husband, both farm laborers, were ecstatic. Their first child, born two years ago, was a girl, and Ms. Karnan was fervently hoping their second one would be a boy.
But the ensuing festivities came to an abrupt end nine days later. Ms. Karnan said that during her stay at her mother’s home, as is customary following the birth of a baby, she stepped outside the coconut-palm thatched hut one afternoon to bathe her 2-year-old daughter after putting her son, Rahul, to sleep. Suddenly, she heard him wail.
Before she could rush in to check on Rahul, a young neighbor, who peeped into their hut on hearing the child crying, yelled out the unthinkable. “Akka[elder sister], your baby is on fire!’ ” the girl said, Ms. Karnan recalled.
“There was a flame on his belly and his right knee, and my husband rushed with a towel to put it off,” said Ms. Karnan. “I got very scared.”
Ms. Karnan and her husband, Karnan Perumal, 26, rushed their child for treatment at a public hospital in Villipuram. After the attack recurred for the fourth time in late July and the parents had visited several hospitals, they faced another wave of trouble. The villagers forced them to move out of the village fearing that the child could cause a fire and burn the village. Mr. Perumal, Ms. Karnan, and Rahul had to find refuge in a temple in an adjacent village. The local press began reporting on their condition and the district administration intervened and moved them to Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu, for treatment at Kilpauk Medical Hospital….
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