Last week, a 13-year-old boy from Kathmandu admitted to Kanti Children’s Hospital for treatment died of multisystem inflammatory syndrome, believed to be linked to Covid-19.

The deceased boy, who was infected with coronavirus a few weeks ago, was rushed to the hospital after suffering from respiratory complications. Doctors at the hospital, who attended to the patient found that his heart was not functioning properly.

“We could not save one boy who was suffering from multisystem inflammatory syndrome,” Dr Krishna Prasad Paudel, director at the hospital, told the Post. “This might be the first reported death from the ailment which has been seen after the start of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, which is known as MIS-C is a serious condition, which develops after 10 days to six weeks of the infection. Doctors say infected children’s vital organs such as heart, lungs, blood vessels, kidney, digestive system, brain skin or eyes become severely inflamed.

“Such cases have been reported at Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, Kathmandu Medical College, and hospitals in Pokhara, Chitwan and Dharan as well,” Dr Sumit Agrawal, pediatrician at Kanti Children’s Hospital, told the Post. “This ailment has symptoms similar to that of Kawasaki disease.”

Kawasaki disease also causes swelling on the walls of arteries throughout the body and affects children the most. The inflation tends to affect the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart muscle.

As the death rate and severity from coronavirus is low among children, it is considered that children are at low risk of infection. Of the 1,803 people who have died from Covid-19 as of Wednesday, less than two percent are under 20 years old, according to data provided by the Ministry of Health and Population.

However, the multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which was relatively unheard of before the coronavirus pandemic, not only kills children, but adults and elderly people are also equally at risk of dying from the ailment.

On Sunday, a 52-year-old man who was also the husband of a cleaning staff at Sukraraj tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, died of the multisystem inflammatory problems.

“It has just been four days since our staffer lost her husband,” Dr Rajesh Shah of Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, told the Post. “What is alarming about this ailment is that people suffer swelling of vital organs after Covid-19 gets cured.”

The risk with the said ailment is that most people think that coronavirus is no longer a threat for them after they test negative, but they may show symptoms of multisystem inflammatory symptoms, which is life threatening if not treated on time, doctors say.

As coronavirus itself is a new virus, much is yet to be known about the multisystem inflammatory syndrome it is associated with, experts say.

“Coronavirus causes hyper reaction in the immune system. Signs and symptoms depend on the organ affected by the ailment,” Dr Ganesh Rai, former director at Kanti Children’s Hospital told the Post. “But the good news is this ailment has treatment.”

According to Rai, if children or adults run a fever for more than 24 hours after two weeks of contracting coronavirus or complain of vomiting, diarrohea and pain in the stomach, feel unusually tired, experience breathing complication or convulsion or rashes appear on the skin, they may be suffering from multisystem inflammatory syndrome.

“They should be rushed to the hospital immediately. Doctors diagnose the ailment either by asking their coronavirus infection status or by performing antibody tests,” added Rai. “

“Patients are given steroids such as dexamethasone, prednisolone, storiod textrametazon, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine among others..”

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Population said that it is unaware of the ailment and doesn’t not have actual data. “Doctors at the Kanti Children’s Hospital might know about it. I have to study about it to comment,” Dr Bikash Devkota, chief of quality standard and regulation division told the Post.