Gulbarga: A mysterious virus seems to have hit the the Central University of Karnataka, Gulbarga.
A 24 year old student of BTech-MTech integrated course fell victim to the virus and died on Wednesday. The university has now been shut down for 10 days. It was confirmed that the virus was water borne after the district health officer visited the campus.
CUK vice-chancellor Professor MN Sudheendra Rao citing preliminary reports said the virus had affected many people around the Amarja reservoir (from which the CUK was temporarily drawing water as it doesn’t have a permanent water source) and a team of health officers has visited the campus to study what actually had happened. The varsity will open once it is ‘sanitised’, he said.
The student Mohammad Chand, hailing from Bihar, fell ill a week ago and later died in a Hyderabad hospital. Doctors suspected the cause of death to be Hepatitis E though university officials are yet to confirm it.
The students protested Chand’s death and alleged that poor quality of water and food in the university campus was responsible for the death. The students said they were not getting good quality water or food in the university hostels and feared that the situation would worsen if not addressed.
However, Rao, said, “We are working for the welfare of the students. We have ordered a check of food and water by experts in all the hostels. We thought that by giving a 10-day break, we can do all possible things to allay all the fears of the students.”
Meanwhile, an emergency medical camp has been set up in the university.
Currently, around 1,350 students are studying in the varsity that is spread across 621 acres of land at Kadaganchi Suntanur villages on the Gulbarga-Waghdhari Inter-State Highway in Aland taluk.
