New Delhi: Eighty-five NDRF personnel who were part of the Odisha train accident rescue operations underwent a psychological assessment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on Friday, with an official saying they have been found to be “okay”.
The federal contingency force has made it mandatory for its personnel to undergo a counselling session to check for PSTD once they come back from operations in which they have seen people suffering from grievous injuries, screaming with pain and had to retrieve dead bodies.
The assessment was conducted by experts from the AIIMS-Kalyani in West Bengal.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) had deployed nine teams, drawn from its battalion bases in Mundali in Odisha and Kolkata, for rescue operations on June 2 following the three-train accident that claimed 290 lives and injured over 1,000.
“Experts from the AIIMS located at Kalyani (in West Bengal’s Nadia district) spoke to the 85 rescuers who were part of the rescue operation following the train accident in Balasore. As per their preliminary findings, they have found all the personnel to be okay,” NDRF Commandant (2nd battalion) Gurminder Singh told PTI. The battalion is based at Haringhata in Nadia district.
“We will analyse if the experts give us further feedback based on the questions they asked and analysis they did,” Singh said.
Officials said three experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Kalyani visited the NDRF camp for the psychological assessment and counselling session.
A senior official said a similar session was held for rescuers who came back from earthquake-hit Turkiye in February and experts had identified one NDRF member who showed some symptoms of stress.
The NDRF member concerned is fine now as he did not show any long-term effects, the official said.
NDRF Director General (DG) Atul Karwal, during a recent event held in Delhi, had said that when he met personnel who participated in the Odisha rail accident operation, he found one personnel hallucinated that he was seeing blood every time he saw water, while another told him that he lost his appetite.
According to official data, the force rescued 44 passengers and retrieved 121 bodies from the rail accident site near Bahanaga Bazar railway station in Odisha’s Balasore district.
The death toll rose to 290 on Friday after a 17-year-old resident of Bihar succumbed to injuries at the SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack.
One of the country’s worst rail accidents involved the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express, the Howrah-bound SMVP Superfast Express from Bengaluru and a goods train.
The NDRF is also in the process of hiring a permanent counsellor for the psychological counselling of its personnel rather than hiring or soliciting services on a temporary basis, the DG had said.
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