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‘Unidentified illness’: Sakeena Itoo, Javed Rana visits Kotranka to review situation
The meeting was attended by senior officers, including secretary, health and medical education Dr Syed Abid Rasheed Shah
After seven deaths, due to an unidentified illness, in two families from Badhaal village in Kotranka area of Rajouri district, minister for health and medical education Sakeena Itoo and minister for jal shakti and tribal affairs Javed Ahmed Rana on Sunday visited Kotranka to review the situation and assess the measures being taken.
The ministers chaired a detailed review meeting regarding the matter. The meeting was attended by senior officers, including secretary, health and medical education Dr Syed Abid Rasheed Shah.
Sakeena Itoo emphasised the urgency of strengthening health systems and enforcing social distancing, expediting results from forensic laboratories, directing the food and supplies department to collect and test additional samples and animal husbandry department to collect and test milk samples.
In addition, she directed to ensure a team of doctors remains stationed in Kotranka besides establishing an MRI facility at Kotranka for improved diagnostic capabilities.
Javed Rana stressed the importance of conducting water quality testing in adjacent areas. In addition, he announced two mobile medical units (MMU’s) for Rajouri and Poonch districts, with each costing around ₹1 crore from tribal affairs department. These MMUs would be equipped with basic medical equipment and staffed by healthcare professionals.
Health secretary briefed the meeting on critical interventions, including deployment of rapid response teams, and ensuring availability of logistics, drugs and ambulances and setting up isolation wards at GMC Rajouri, Jammu, and SMGS Hospital.
Earlier, Rajouri deputy commissioner Abhishek Sharma provided an extensive presentation outlining the timeline of events, spot maps, objectives, and case definitions. He highlighted efforts in passive and active surveillance, data collection, laboratory investigations, autopsies, environmental inquiries and descriptive epidemiology.
Seven persons (a man and his four children and two siblings of another couple) died in Badhaal village in Kotranka in two separate incidents on December 8 and 12.
Health officials suspected food poisoning as the cause of their deaths.
Team of experts from the National Institute of Virology, Pune, PGI Chandigarh and National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Delhi, arrived in Jammu to assist in the investigations.
