Hyderabad: Seventeen lakh people in undivided Andhra Pradesh suffered from fevers with unknown origin last year, according to data collected from government hospitals by the director of health.

This number is only from government hospitals; private hospitals do not report these fevers.

These fevers could not be diagnosed with existing tests, leading doctors, scientists and virologists to look into emerging viruses.

Dr M. Radha Krishna, organising secretary of the National Conference on Emerging and Re-emerging Viral Outbreaks in India at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, said, “While we have the National Institute of Virology in Pune, there is a need to develop many more centres so that new viruses found in a particular region at a particular time can be studied and diagnosis can be done.”

Doctors and scientists debated about the need to have a mechanism within the existing set-up where they could network and work on the identification of the new viruses.

Dr Nagendra of the department of general medicine at Gandhi Hospital said, “There has been a huge rise, but that does not mean that it is not treated.

Treatment requires strong medicines and sometimes it requires only proper rest and diet. There are different strains but we are not sure what is the reason for the fever.”

Doctors and scientists are trying to understand what causes the fever. They are trying to find out whether the virus attacks the blood stream, the brain cells or the visceral region.

The problem is that different viruses have lifespans ranging from 30 seconds to 70 days. They are transmitted from animals to humans and sometimes from humans to humans and also from humans to animals.

The rate of transmission depends on the weather, wind movement and also flora and fauna. With largescale deforestation, scientists are of the opinion that the virus cycle in flora and fauna has been disturbed and they are looking for new hosts, and have turned to humans.