Child dies in hospital, toll 8

Rajouri, Dec 18: With the death of a 12 year old child in hospital today, the toll in mysterious death cases of Badhaal village of Rajouri’s Kotranka has risen to eight.

However, all the patients kept in preventive medical observation are completely stable and out of danger.

National level medical research as well as examination teams from different institutes are also camping in this remote area striving hard to conduct aggressive screening as well as testing to find the actual cause of these deaths.  Pertinent to mention here that two separate incidence of mysterious deaths happened in Badhaal village during last two weeks in which one person and his five children and a brother- sister died while few other members of these two families were hospitalized.

On Wednesday, officials said, 12 year old Ashfaq Ahmed son of Mohammad Rafiq died after remaining hospitalised in GMC Jammu for six days. Ashfaq was referred from GMC Rajouri to Jammu last Thursday and was under treatment there since then while he was being referred to Chandigarh today when he passed away. His younger brother Ishtiyaq (7) and daughter Nazia (5) already passed away last Thursday.

With this death, the number of fatalities has increased to eight and all the deceased belong to two families and are from same village.

Meanwhile, to check for any possible outbreak of infectious diseases, with focus on epidemic, several teams of national level institutions like Indian Council of Medical Research, National Center for Disease Control, PGI Chandigarh and National Center for Virology are camping in this remote area.