SHEGAON: The people of Shegaon tehsil are not able to find the reason for their sudden hair loss. It has been three weeks since the incident was reported.

More than 50 medical experts from the Indian Council of Medical Research, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi and the National Institute of Virology in Pune, as well as local doctors, have reached the spot and collected water and soil samples to find out the cause of the disease.

Twelve villages have been affected by the unknown disease. On Friday, the district administration had ordered chlorination of all water sources. “Although the samples taken so far have shown a high concentration of 40 per cent nitrate, there is no need to worry. We came to know about the extent of the problem only when we started conducting house-to-house surveys,” said Buldhana district collector Kiran Patil.

Earlier reports had said that more than half of the people in the villages, regardless of gender, are affected by the condition. Hair loss, including in children aged ten and twelve, begins without any symptoms. It starts in small amounts at first. After a day or two, most of the hair is gone. Within a week, they become bald.

'I went to a barber shop. The barber refused to shave my head because I was from an infected village. I was not allowed to participate in social gatherings in the neighboring village,' said one.

'People from other villages stopped talking to us. Marriage proposals between families in their village and ours were canceled,' said an elderly villager in Bondgaon.