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.
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 to possible reasons of 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 of 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. 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.