Rajouri deaths: J&K chief secy conducts meet, reviews efforts towards safeguarding people
All the concerned from health and police departments along with the representatives of nationally reputed institutions were present
Chief Secretary Atal Dulloo chaired a meeting to review the efforts made to safeguard the lives of people from Rajouri’s Badhaal village here on Thursday, said an official spokesperson.
All the concerned from health and police departments along with the representatives of nationally reputed institutions were present.
The “mysterious illness” has claimed the life of 16 people, including 13 children, since December 7 last year. A woman from the same village had died of pregnancy related complications taking the toll to 17. However, for the past over 12 days, no new case of the unexplained disease has been reported.
The meeting, besides principal secretary, home and secretary, health and medical education, was attended by ADGP, CID; divisional commissioner, Jammu; IGP, Jammu; IGP, CID; DC, Rajouri; SSP, Rajouri; Principal, GMC Jammu and other local health experts. It was also joined by director, AIIMS; director, PGIMER, Chandigarh; DG, ICMR; director, Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (IITR), Lucknow; director, CFSL; Experts from National Institute of Virology (NIV), DRD, Gawalior and experts from other reputed laboratories.
Dulloo also asked the concerned officials for carrying out audit of the health facilities to examine the need of adding more ICU beds, oxygen plants, isolation wards in addition to availability of specific drugs and specialists there. He also urged the AIIMS, New Delhi to extend their support in enhancing the capacity of the local medics here for dealing with such situations.
He also directed the law enforcement agencies to conclude their investigations in light of the test reports received from these institutions and the ones which are yet to come.
Secretary health and medical education Dr Syed Abid Rashid Shah briefed about all the efforts that are underway.
Dr Shah also gave out that out of the 55 symptomatic persons 38 were discharged after recovery and 17 deaths had been registered so far. He revealed that there are currently no admissions in any of the hospitals and patients had even been examined by teams of doctors from PGIMER, Chandigarh and AIIMS, New Delhi here.
It was further given out that the health teams are stationed there to keep surveillance for any of the symptoms appearing in any person with whole population of the village screened by healthcare providers.
Divisional Commissioner (Jammu) Ramesh Kumar said that no food or eatables were being exchanged among the families, who have been placed under continuous surveillance adding that at present 363 people from 60 different families had been quarantined with 592 animals being tended to by the officials from animal and sheep husbandry departments to safeguard their lives.
Meanwhile, teams constituted by deputy commissioner Abhishek Sharma have collected 529 samples --293 of insecticides, pesticides, herbicides and 236 of fertilisers--from across the district in connection with the ongoing investigation. These samples will be sent for testing
The entire exercise was conducted jointly by the executive magistrate, police, health and agriculture department under the close supervision of additional district development commissioner Dr Raj Kumar Thapa.