MUZAFFARPUR, Bihar The Primary Health Centre (PHC) in Motipur has an air-conditioned Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) ward, oxygen cylinders, a ready supply of medicines, two neatly made beds, but no patients and a skeletal staff of doctors.

Forty kilometres away, the Muzaffarpur district hospital, known as the Sadar hospital has eight beds ready to treat AES patients, but these are empty too.

We have the equipment and medicines, but we dont have the doctors, said the lone doctor on duty.

The district hospital, this doctor estimated, had vacancies for almost 25 more doctor and nurses. We only have one pediatrician. Our cardiologist, our surgeon, even our eye specialist, are looking at AES cases, the doctor said.

For the latest news and more, follow HuffPost India on Twitter , Facebook , and subscribe to our newsletter .

Five children who were admitted here, he said, had themselves discharged almost immediately. Their parents did not believe that they could get proper treatment here.

A mere 6 km from the Sadar hospital, children dying of AES are sequestered two to a bed at the Shree Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH), where doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers work night and day to save as many as they can.

On Monday, June 17, the Bihar government confirmed that over 100 children had died of AES in Muzaffarpur district this summer, 83 of whom died in SKMCH.

Many of these children could have been saved, doctors and nurses told HuffPost India, if the patients had first visited primary health care centres, like the ones in Motipur, or secondary care centres like the district hospital, rather than rushing to already overwhelmed tertiary care centres like SKMCH. These doctors and nurses spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from the state government.

An empty eight bed hospital amidst such a crisis was nothing short of criminal, the doctor from the district hospital said, noting that doctors could be deputed from elsewhere in Bihar, or sent from Delhi, until the worst of the AES outbreak was over.