Shitala's Scourge

Of all the gods and goddesses in India's teeming pantheon of deities, perhaps none is more fearsome than Shitala. Mythology tells that the red-garbed goddess rides around the countryside on an ass in search of victims, scourging with stinging reeds those whom she finds. Her beatings cause the victims' skins to erupt in festering, angry pustules, their bodies to burn as if on fire. Shitala may be a myth, but her presence is all too real in India today: she is the goddess of small pox. In what some consider the worst epidemic of the century, the disease is now raging through several of the nation's states.

Smallpox is now merely a footnote in the history of the industrialized West, and has been all but eliminated from most of the world's developing nations. But the disease has remained endemic in India, which still accounts for most of the world's remaining reported cases. The country is likely to retain this dubious distinction for a while. Indian authorities report that the current epidemic, which began last January, has so far stricken more than 100,000 and claimed 16,000 lives. The World Health Organization, which figures that as many as one out of every five afflicted by the disease will die, estimates the toll at more than 20,000.

Lack of Concern. Shitala's scourge has been particularly felt in the states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam. Yet no where has the goddess lashed harder than in Bihar. With 70,393 reported cases, that state accounts for 60% of the world's current total of known smallpox victims.

Officials blame much of the epidemic on the primitive conditions in Bihar. The state, which has a population of more than 60 million, is one of India's most backward. Ninety percent of its people live in villages that are little more than clusters of one-room mud huts. The people are largely illiterate, and some are afraid to report the disease for fear they will be socially ostracized and deprived of their jobs. "Some of these people would sooner travel 100 miles to a temple of Shitala to pray to her to spare their children than report to the nearest vaccination center a few miles away," says an Indian health officer.

The main cause of the epidemic is indifference. Although the Indian government, as part of its last five-year plan, set aside $21.6 million for smallpox immunization programs to be administered by the states, Bihar leaders made little use of the available funds. Engaged in an internecine political struggle for control of the state government, they failed to enforce a plan for immunizing the local population. Their lack of concern has apparently infected even health workers. While the epidemic rages, 2,200 Bihari doctors and health personnel are threatening to strike unless their salary demands are met.

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