DEHRADUN, July 11: Uttarakhand Health Department was able to save minimum 750 lives with timely intervention through medical screening and identifying devotees unfit for travelling to high altitude shrines of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath.
Health department officials informed that the intensive screening at different locations on the Chardham routes helped medically unfit pilgrims return home and 37,000 were detected with high-risked comorbidity.
Officials informed that health department screened 10.02 lakh pilgrims in the first two months of the Chardham pilgrimage 2025 that that took off in early May. This number is much higher than 9.5 lakh screening of devotees done for entire Chardham season in 2024.
More than 750 devotees were found medically unfit to travel to high altitude Chardham shrines of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, and were sent back to their homes by the state government, keeping in view the medical threat to their lives.
According to the department officials, a sizeable number of people sent back were elderly pilgrims who would have faced difficulties in acclimatising to the low oxygen availability environment in the high hill areas.
Around 610 unfit devotees were returned in ambulance, 39 were air lifted in helicopters. “Intensive health screenings carried out by the teams deployed at around 75 medical facilities set up by the department for this pilgrimage season have yielded hugely favourable results. Remedial steps taken by the medical teams in the hills have brought down the mortality figure to a remarkable extent this pilgrimage season. Final figure of the screened pilgrimes will be much higher. It has slowed down for now but will pick up after monsoon” said the state health secretary Dr Rajesh Kumar.
The Health Secretary shared that devotees had to return midway from their pilgrimage. Around 108 devotees had to return without visiting any of the high altitude shrines.
As many as 37,014 health screened pilgrims were detected with high-risk comorbidity and 6,629 were duly counselled by by the health counsellors deployed at different points enroute Chardham shrines.
(UNI)
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