Origins of Rotavirus

ROTAVIRUS

The government of the day (and ‘yesterday’ and I am quite sure ‘tomorrow’) is doing a lot for reducing the spread of rotavirus in the country. We are flooded with ads advising us to take precautions, especially during the monsoons. However, it fails to inform us the source of this virus and I was keen on finding how this virus came about! A bit of questioning here and there (not the medical fraternity as they were ignorant of it in the first place and spread this ignovirus to the government machinery) gave me a very good insight and in typical Indian fashion people told me that the ‘baap’ of rotavirus was ‘lotavirus’ and the ‘maai’  was ‘matkavirus’ who have made the 100,000 kilometres of Indian Railways’ tracks their home apart from of course, their relatives dwelling in the open countryside and any open spaces that were still remaining in urban and semi-urban settings. They capitalized upon the fact that IR’s trains do not use chemical toilets and also that of open drains in every jurisdiction of every civic/panchayat administration in the country. Another cause for their multiplying like the population of India & China put together was the lackadaisical attitude of Water & Sewage Boards in the aforesaid civic/panchayat jurisdictions who in their infinite wisdom felt it was too expensive to dig two separate trenches for laying of water and sewage lines and instead made do with just one resulting in both human intake and human excreta being juxtaposed in extremely close vicinity like two lovers cosying up in the Hanging Gardens of Mumbai under the watchful eye of the cop who took some ‘chai-paani’ from them! These very same Water & Sewage Boards, who, at every opportunity complain about the ‘aam-aadmi’ (no, not those mango sellers) throwing garbage in storm-water drains, discharges both semi-treated and untreated sewage into this network of storm-water drains from whence, the urban relatives of rotavirus enter various water bodies and keep multiplying! This is where the ‘matkavirus’ thrives and when people collect water in matkas from these water bodies in rural areas for potable purposes…you can loosely understand the rest of the journey that the ‘matkavirus’ takes and meets up with ‘lotavirus’ to mate. I have heard that National Geographic has decided to cover these journeys in their series ‘Great Migrations’! And as doctors today are more interested in instilling some common civic sense into us rather than treat the problems, the rotavirus is thriving. Last heard IUCN and WWF have been petitioned by some RTI activists that the new measures being taken by the government of the day will lead to possible extinction of the rotavirus and that it should be included in the list of endangered species!

Tongue in Cheek by Kali