Rajouri/Jammu/Srinagar: The death toll due to a mysterious disease in a remote village of the Rajouri district has risen to 14 with two more members of a family including a six-year-old girl succumbing to it, officials said on Tuesday.
The 14 fatalities including 11 children and three elders in three families in the last 30 days have caused panic among the residents of Badhal village of Koteranka Sub-division. The government has deployed various health teams to collect samples to identify and address the potential health risks, the officials said.
They said Safina Kousar breathed her last at a hospital in Jammu where her three other siblings died over the past two days and two others are still battling for their lives.
The grandfather of the children Mohammad Rafiq also died in a hospital in Rajouri on Monday, the officials said.
Nine people belonging to two families died in the village last month. Initially the deaths were attributed to suspected food poisoning. However, the situation turned grim when most of the villagers complained of similar symptoms, prompting government intervention and the rushing of experts from various prestigious health institutions in the country.
Last month, the principal of Government Medical College Hospital, Jammu, Dr Ashutosh Gupta, had said preliminary investigations pointed to a viral infection as the cause of the mysterious deaths. However, he also said more studies were needed to reach a definitive conclusion.
Teams of experts from Pune’s National Institute of Virology, PGI Chandigarh, AIIMS Delhi and the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Delhi, have visited the village to assist in the investigations.
Rajouri Deputy Commissioner Abhishek Sharma is personally monitoring the situation to ensure timely intervention and mitigation, the officials said, adding aggressive contact tracing and sampling by the Health Department teams are being carried out.
The officials said food and water samples had already been collected to ascertain the quality and safety of essential supplies in the region.
A dedicated team of the Health Department, led by Jammu Health Director, Dr Rakesh Mangotra and Rajouri Chief Medical Officer Dr Manohar Rana is camping at Kandi Kotranka to oversee the operations.
The administration has also stationed a mobile medical unit and ambulance on standby to address any emergent medical needs.
The district administration remains committed to the safety and well-being of the residents and urges the public to cooperate with health officials during the ongoing surveillance and interventions, an official said.
He said for any health-related concerns, the public is encouraged to reach out to the district control room or the local health authorities.
Meanwhile, the Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, today chaired a meeting of all the concerned from divisional and district administrations along with health experts from several national health institutions to take stock of the measures taken so far to identify the real causes behind the mysterious deaths reported from village Badhal in district Rajouri.
The meeting, besides Secretary Health & Medical Education Department was attended by ADGP, Jammu; Divisional Commissioner, Jammu; DIG, Rajouri-Poonch Range; DC, Rajouri; SP, Rajouri; Principal, GMC, Jammu; Principal, GMC, Rajouri;Director, Health Services, Jammu and Experts from PGIMER, CSIR, National Institute of Virology (NIV), National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), DRDO and others, an official press release informed.
It said the Chief Secretary impressed upon the Health and Police departments to assess the reports received from different institutes of repute to identify the real cause of these deaths. He asked them to work in close coordination to take this investigation to its logical conclusion.
He also directed the Police department to utilize the best of their resources to study these reports along with using other scientific measures to reach to the conclusion. He also urged the Health department to study these reports to find the reasonable leads causing these deaths.
He made out that the reports furnished by different institutions are now available with us and more are going to be received soon. He maintained that these should be enough to conclude the investigations and reach possible reasons for these deaths reported from this particular village.
Dulloo also took this occasion to hear from the different experts from PGIMER (Chandigarh), NIV, CSIR and NCDC about their findings after studying numerous samples taken from the affected persons or area. He also sought suggestions from them about the future course of action to be taken from here.
It was given out by these experts that after carrying out extensive microbiological studies no viral, bacterial or microbial infection was found to cause these deaths. These were found to be localised and possibly having some epidemiological linkage, the official release informed.
It was also given out that certain neurotoxins were found in the samples of the deceased persons which is further investigated to know more about it.
It is pertinent to mention here that from 7th of December, 2024 about 12 deaths out of 38 affected persons were reported in three different incidents from the village Badhal of District Rajouri the causes of which were unknown.
The government has taken several measures including rushing of Rapid Response Teams, carrying out investigations of samples from humans and animals, testing of water etc besides taking assistance of reputed health institutions of the country to know about the actual causes behind these deaths.
