One Koya child dead after Gollaguppa’s chloroquine round — inquiry ordered, not finished

A preventive chloroquine round in a small Agency village has become a public-health emergency: one confirmed child death, dozens of children in hospital, a Chief Minister’s inquiry, and a social-media rumour of a second death that officials have denied.

On 1 September 2026, staff of the Lakshmipuram primary health centre gave chloroquine tablets to 71 people in Gollaguppa village of Yetapaka mandal, Polavaram district. The tablets were given as prevention after at least five malaria cases. The village population has been cited at 253, which means the round reached a large share of the settlement in a single day.

Within hours, 52 people fell ill with vomiting and severe breathing difficulty. Forty-seven of the 52 were children. The only death confirmed on the public record is that of Madivi Jamuna, a seven-year-old Koya girl and Class 2 student at the local government primary school. She died that same day during treatment at Bhadrachalam Area Hospital in Telangana. Chintoor ITDA Project Officer Subham Nokwal confirmed the death.

Twenty-eight patients, mostly children, were shifted to the Bhadrachalam government / Area Hospital on Tuesday, 1 September. Twenty-four remained at Lakshmipuram PHC. District Collector K. Dinesh Kumar said hospitalised patients were stable and out of danger.

On 2 September, 23 Koya children below ten were moved from the PHC to Bhadrachalam. Special doctor teams were placed in the village. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu reviewed the episode late on 1 September with health officials and the Collector and ordered a comprehensive inquiry. A nine-member team was drawn from Kakinada Government General Hospital, with three specialist teams from Vijayawada, Rajamahendravaram and Kakinada.

Officials denied social-media reports of a second death. This desk records that denial as part of the public record: one confirmed death, Madivi Jamuna, and no second fatality established in the filings used here.

What the public record does not yet show is as important as what it does. No concluded inquiry report has been published. No confirmed cause — a dosing error, an empty stomach, a contaminated batch, or an unrelated medical condition — has been established in the locked record. Batch laboratory results have not been published as a finished finding. This cutting does not invent a cardiac history for the child, a tablet count per person, or a forensic-lab dispatch that has not been locked from the primary filings.

The geography matters. Gollaguppa sits in Yetapaka mandal of Polavaram district, an official Andhra Pradesh district from 31 December 2025. The nearest large treatment node used on 1–2 September was Bhadrachalam, across the Telangana line — a reminder that Agency health emergencies still travel on roads and jurisdictions that do not match a mandal map.

For Koya households in a 253-person village, a PHC chloroquine round that puts 47 children into vomiting and breathlessness is not a statistic. It is the difference between a malaria-prevention camp and a night of hospital transfers. The inquiry ordered by the Chief Minister is the process that must now answer whether the tablets, the protocol, or something else failed. Until that inquiry reports, the established facts remain: 71 dosed, 52 ill, 47 of them children, one confirmed death named Madivi Jamuna, a denied second-death rumour, specialist teams in the village, and a Collector’s assurance that those still in hospital were out of danger as of the 1–2 September filings.

Readers should hold two things at once. Malaria prevention in Agency mandals is a real public-health duty after confirmed cases. A mass chloroquine round that is followed within hours by breathing difficulty in 47 children is also a real duty to explain. The nine-member Kakinada team and the three specialist units are the State’s answer on paper. The paper is not yet a finding.