Baharampur (West Bengal): The mysterious disease affecting children in West Bengal's Murshidabad district for the past one week has claimed 19 lives with a fresh death reported at the Jangipur Sadar hospital today, the district magistrate, Manoj Pant, said.

Unofficial sources, however, said that 30 children had succumbed to the disease which is characterised by high fever and secretion of saliva.

The district magistrate said that the deceased children aged betwen two and three years.

The exact number of children dying of the disease was difficult to pinpoint as most cases had occurred at remote villages of Lalgola sub-division of the district, he said.

Two teams - one of epidemiological experts headed by district CMOH (II) Dr Dilip Mandal and another from the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) -rushed to the villages to collect blood and saliva samples of those affected.

The state's Director of Health Services, Dr Prabhakar Chatterjee, said that the disease was reported from Kadamtala, Kochidanga, Ramchandrapur, Nasibpur, Kurgachi and Notundiar gram panchayat areas under Lalgola block in the sub-division.

The Murshidabad acting CMO (H), Dr Pinaki Ghosh, told reporters that medical teams were trying to identify the source and magnitude of the disease which is presumably an offshoot of the severe heat wave prevailing in the region.

The Lalgola Block Medical Officer, Shatanik Majhi, said that there was an acute shortage of antibiotics in the hospitals of the area, predominantly inhabited by very poor and needy people.

PTI