Mahasingh Parte lives in the last hut in a village on the border of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.To reach the village, Matla, one has to trek a kilometre up a hill, on muddy trails and slippery slopes.The village in Balaghat district in eastern Madhya Pradesh is surrounded by rolling hills and forests, a picture of tranquility for tourists visiting the nearby Kanha National Park.But for Parte and other members of the Baiga tribe, who live in this remote region, life is a daily struggle – with little help forthcoming from the government.Parte earns a living by collecting and selling tendu leaves and forest produce or labouring on other farms. The hut itself is bare except for a few steel utensils stacked in one dark corner. He grows millet and forages for seeds, other than depending on government ration.“If we can manage, we eat two meals a day,” he told Scroll. “On many days, my children eat just once.”In May, Parte’s four-year-old son Samlu caught a high fever. Soon, his six-year-old daughter Shamku’s body also felt warm.One by one, all his five children fell ill.But Samlu and Shamku were the worst off. Both had a rash-like eruption on their bodies. They developed a cough and a cold, and their eyes swelled up. They could not keep their food down and kept vomiting.Parte approached a ‘panda pujari’, or faith healer, in the village who chanted a few mantras, gave them water to keep near the children, and assured them they will be alright.The Baigas trust faith healers and are often reluctant to rely on the ramshackle and near-absent state healthcare system.Parte had never been to a hospital, not even for his wife’s five deliveries. “We don’t trust them,” he said. The nearest health sub-centre in Machhurda village is 5 km away but has no doctor.But, this time, the mantras did not cure the children.On the morning of May 18, four days after he fell ill, Samlu died. The next evening, Shamku passed away.Mahasingh Parte lost two children in May to the outbreak. Credit: Tabassum Barnagarwala.No one from the health department visited their home or were even aware of the deaths for at least two months. The village has no accredited social health activist or ASHA worker – a government health worker who monitors the health of the rural population.A week ago, Sadesh, a 10-year-old in the same village, had died of similar symptoms – fever, whitish spots in the mouth and tongue, rashes on body and vomiting.Sadesh’s uncle Hansu Dhurwey told Scroll that he, too, was taken to a panda pujari. “When his condition did not improve, we took him to a private doctor in Khadi (a nearby town in Chhattisgarh). But the doctor said Sadesh was already critical. So we brought him home.”The village residents climbed up a hill with the bodies of the three children in their arms and buried them in a forest. Large stones were placed to mark their resting places.Unknown to the government, the buried children were possibly the first casualties in a mysterious measles and malaria outbreak in this remote Madhya Pradesh region that went undetected for at least two months – and led to the deaths of at least 25 children from the Baiga and Gond tribes.Scroll travelled to Balaghat to trace the outbreak’s path– starting from Matla village where the first deaths possibly occurred to Bondari, which officially became the ground zero of the outbreak, and villages beyond where the infection has now spread.Many children were ill for weeks before succumbing, indicating that timely treatment could have saved lives. “We are seeing so many cases and deaths because there is no health system here,” Congress MLA Sanjay Uikey said.Parte stands near the graves of his children. Credit: Tabassum Barnagarwala.‘Health teams are coming now, after my children have died’Uikey’s observation matched what Scroll saw on the ground. We found only a small minority of children in the tribal villages had been vaccinated against measles. Parte told us that none of his five children had been immunised against any disease.Three children died in Matla in May, followed by four more in June, and three more in July in other villages of the Birsa block. A local anganwadi worker in Matla told Scroll that she knew of the deaths in the village but had failed to report them.It was after the ninth death on July 22 that the health department swung into action.The Madhya Pradesh health department’s own records on the 25 deceased children, which Scroll has accessed, showed that only nine of them managed to get some medical attention in government or private hospitals. The local legislator and health officials say the number of children who died of the disease is 29.On August 29, chief minister Mohan Yadav travelled to the affected villages and announced a compensation of Rs 2 lakh for 22 children who died during the outbreak.In the first seven deaths, Scroll found that the children, aged one to 12, died at home without any medical care. None had been vaccinated against measles.Auxiliary nurse midwives and ASHA workers, the first point of contact in the government healthcare system, were absent in the villages we visited. Health officials said that many of the children were malnourished and had contracted malaria, which made the measles infection worse.The Baigas are a particularly vulnerable tribal group who live close to forests, and the Gonds are one of the largest indigenous tribal groups in central India. They shy away from government hospitals due to a lack of trust, officials said.The Indian state is barely present in this remote region. “There is no road in our village, an ambulance can’t reach us. We have to carry sick people on bamboo sticks,” said Samaroo Dhurwey, who lost two children to the suspected measles and malaria infection.In late August, as he watched health workers arriving in his village with a fogging machine, he said: “The health teams are coming to spray now, after my children have died.”The disease is discoveredIn May, Samaroo Dhurwey travelled from Bondari village to Matla, a distance of 10 km – around the time when Parte’s children had fallen ill in the same village.“After I returned, my seven children, wife and I all fell ill,” Dhurwey, aged 56, told Scroll. A few days later, his brother’s family, who live in a nearby hut, also fell ill.The condition of Dhurwey’s two children – one-year-old Sahil and 12-year-old Lamnin – worsened. They had rashes on their body, whitish spots in the mouth, difficulty in eating, high fever, cold, and eventually “altered sensorium” or a confused mental state. These are classic measles and malaria symptoms, two experts told Scroll.From May till June, they remained ill for almost a month but were not taken to a hospital. Bondari village has no accredited social health activist and the nearest primary health center in Songudda had no medical officer.Lamnin died on June 26, Sahil the next day. Three weeks later, a third child died in the village.Except for the villagers, nobody in the government knew of the deaths.In July, Parshuram Dhurwey, the sarpanch of the Adori panchayat, heard about the three deaths in the Bondari village. “Something was not right,” Dhurwey said.On July 22, Dhurwey informed the then sub-district magistrate, Arpit Gupta, who sent a team to the village the next day. “We initially thought it was a seasonal flu. But when we went door to door, we found sick children in every house,” Gupta said.By July end, Gupta had an inkling that the spread of infection was much larger.Bondari became the ground zero of the “mysterious outbreak”, with at least one sick child in each of the 103 homes. Tribals from the Baiga community were the worst affected.“Every year there are few deaths during the monsoons. But we have never seen this before. Children were ill everywhere,” Dhurwey told Scroll.Samaroo Dhurwey and his wife Sagni lost two children to suspected measles and malaria in Bondari village. Credit: Tabassum Barnagarwala.Health teams poured into the hills in early August, with workers from as far as 100 km transferred here to carry out surveys. They began to report measles-like symptoms in children in other villages.Till mid-August, the outbreak was largely contained to 18 villages in four gram panchayats. But by late August, ill children were being found even beyond those villages.“Since the measles outbreak has occurred for the first time here, many health workers were untrained in identifying the symptoms. That led to a delay,” said Arpit Gupta, the sub-district magistrate who was later transferred out.Health workers began the difficult task of counselling families to admit their children in hospitals. Many tribal residents chose to hide in the forest when health teams came. They called the unknown infection ‘mata’ and chose to seek panda pujaris for cure. This further delayed timely treatment.“Even hospitalising the children was tough,” said Dr Paresh Uplap, former chief medical health officer in Balaghat. Uplap was removed from the post earlier this week. “Parents were running away from hospital wards with their kids.” Eventually, the collector ordered police constables to be stationed outside wards. Measles and malariaOn July 27, members of the National Institute for Tribal Health Research visited Balaghat to advise the district health department.It put out a report, accessed by Scroll, which found a high incidence of measles in these villages – in 21 out of 47 samples it tested. Malaria was found in eight out of 16 samples.In the last week of July, the health department also sent blood samples of the sick children to Jabalpur Medical College and the National Institute of Virology in Pune.The Jabalpur Medical College’s microbiology department stated that it found measles virus in 17 of 64 serum samples and malaria parasite in 50 of the 96 samples. In some cases, children were infected by both.As the deceased children had been buried, the reason for their death could not be confirmed. But a detailed history of their symptoms pointed to a measles-like illness, a senior health officer in Balaghat told Scroll.Researchers with the ICMR said they were investigating the entry of the measles virus into Birsa, a region with no recorded outbreaks for at least two decades. “It is a big question for us,” said Professor Vijay Nema, scientist at National Institute for Tribal Health Research, who visited Balaghat.Several residents migrate to Telangana to harvest chillies. Officials suspect the virus could have also travelled back on an asymptomatic carrier.Even if not usually fatal, the measles virus is highly contagious. An infected person can transmit the virus by coughing, sneezing, or even talking five days before the initial symptoms emerge. “At the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the R naught value for coronavirus was 2.5,” virologist Shahid Jameel pointed out.R naught is the average number of people that a single infected person can infect in a population with no previous immunity. “For measles, the value is 18, making it one of the most contagious diseases,” Jameel explained.The lack of vaccination allowed the virus to spread silently until it snowballed into a localised outbreak.Nema said they suspect the virus may have spread through “super spreader events” – weekly markets where parents brought their children, gatherings in residential schools for tribal students, and an August 9 public meeting in the district to observe World Tribal Day.An absent stateThe outbreak has exposed the abysmal health infrastructure in the Birsa block of Balaghat, where the deaths occurred.In fact, of the 72 vacancies of ASHA workers across Balaghat, 48 are in the Birsa block.The local anganwadi worker in Matla, Suhadra Yadav, where the first deaths occurred, failed to report the infection to health authorities even when she got to know of them, she admitted to Scroll.An anganwadi worker is supposed to report deaths in her monthly progress reports to her supervisor and child development project officers.In Yadav’s register, Parte’s children, Samlu and Shamku, have been named as Ram and Ruhi.Scroll found that under-reporting of deaths in the community by government officials is common. “There is a limited outreach of the health department and women and child development department here,” said Dinesh Dhurwey, district president of the Adivasi Vikas Parishad.‘They say these are Baigas, they know nothing’The Birsa block in Balaghat, which includes Bondari and other affected villages, was declared Naxal-free in December 2025.Uplap, former district chief medical health officer, admitted that government officials have only recently begun to reach out to villages in the Birsa block. “Naxal activities made our work difficult,” he said.However, Shubham Uikey, a Balaghat-based social activist, pointed out that the district had reported no active violence by Naxals for many years.Uplap said that the village residents often resist medical intervention. He cited the example of Samaroo Dhurwey’s brother Dashrath who also lost his 13-year-old son to “measles-like symptoms” on August 13. When his second son fell sick, Dashrath refused to admit him to the hospital.His brother Samaroo said they “follow what the panda pujari says”. “The panda told us that our children will die in hospital,” he said.The lack of trust in government healthcare goes beyond a panda pujari’s advice.Members of the Baiga community complained that even when they visited clinics and hospitals, they were treated with condescension and disrespect.“They say these are Baigas, they know nothing. Give them any medicine,” said Budhan Singh, who lost his brother Rooplal in August to the disease. “They will have it like cattle.”The presence of the health teams in the area following the outbreak may have inspired some confidence.Sarpanch Parshuram Dhurwey said after a few children recovered and returned from the hospital, local residents will begin to trust government healthcare. “More people are willing to send their children to hospitals now,” he said. “The government never made such efforts before.”This is the first story of a two-part series.