It looks neither malaria nor dengue but pneumonia and Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) are proving to be Odisha’s biggest emergency health threat. Moreover, the State looks like to be under viral seize as viral-led diseases accounted for the maximum death burden in State last year. Such disconcerting trends have come to fore on Tuesday with the release of National Health Profile - 2015 by the Union Health Ministry. Significantly, malaria is no more the giant killer in Odisha with only around two deaths every ten days. On the contrary, pneumonia takes nine lives in every ten days and ARI sees a mortality rate of over three in every ten days. Even, viral encephalitis kills three in every ten days. When with around 319 deaths in 2014 pneumonia emerged as the number one killer in communicable diseases in State, ARI with around 20.88 lakh cases last year dwarfed the total of 3.88 lakh malaria cases in Odisha. The dengue cases also were around 6,400. Interestingly, during the period between 2009 and 2014, the State could somewhat attain a control over malaria and diarrhoea with the cases showing a marginal increase of around 13,000 and 90, 000 respectively. But ARI cases in Odisha during the period grew by a whopping 110 per cent to touch around 21 lakh. Significantly, Odisha enjoys the dubious distinction of having the second-most burden of ARI cases in country after Kerala. The State is fifth nationally with maximum pneumonia burden. Viral burden is on the rise in Odisha. As per NHP - 2015, viral meningitis, encephalitis and hepatitis cases last year posted a big rise vis-a-vis 2013. Most significant is of a total of around 891 deaths last year in the State owing to communicable diseases, viral-led afflictions alone (including pneumonia and ARI) account for over 71 per cent mortality share. Protozoan diseases like malaria and bacterial diseases together took just around 30 per cent of the total mortality burden due to communicable diseases in 2014 in Odisha. Besides, with six tetanus neo-natal deaths last year, Odisha topped the country. The State figured in top ten with high burden of viral hepatitis cases in 2014. Viral encephalitis has the deadliest mortality rate of around 63 deaths per 1,000 cases in Odisha, whereas deaths due to malaria were around 19 per 1 lakh cases last year. Among bacterial diseases, typhoid has the highest mortality rate followed by diarrhoea last year in State. Men in Odisha seem more vulnerable to viral diseases than women as more than half of the casualties reported last year due to viral-led diseases were of men. Moreover, men folk do look doubly vulnerable to pneumonia and ARI as they have weaker lung profile thanks to smoking.