What has killed 500 children in India?

Country's national child rights commission has ordered the government of Uttar Pradesh to report on the status of an encephalitis epidemic that media reports claim has killed as many as 500 children in the poverty-afflicted state over the past two months, the Times of India reports.

In a letter to the state chief secretary, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights ( NCPCR) said that the issue amounted to violation of 'children's right to life, survival and development,' the paper said.

Almost always first reported as a "mystery virus" or "mystery fever," epidemics of encephalitis have become an annual ritual in northern India over the past several years, seemingly without any aggressive government action to combat the problem.