new delhi as bihar grapples with acute encephalitis syndrome that has claimed 106 lives so far union health minister harsh vardhan tuesday decided to constitute a permanent multidisciplinary group of experts at the centre to monitor and formulate measures to be taken up in the event of such an outbreakthe central group will comprise experts from the all india institute of medical sciences aiims national centre for disease control ncdc indian council of medical research icmr world health organisation who ministry of science and technology and ministry of women and child development along with experts of meteorology nutrition and agricultural sciencevardhan also chaired a meeting of experts who deliberated upon the factors causing high child mortality in the reported acute encephalitis syndromejapanese encephalitis aesje cases in muzaffarpur district of bihar and the immediate measures to be taken up to prevent themwe discussed the socioeconomic profile of the households which have reported such cases their nutrition profiles ongoing heatwave reported high percentage of hypoglycemia in children who have died prevailing health infrastructure in the district and other factors that could significantly be considered in these cases the minister saidsenior officers from the ministry of health ministry of women and child development experts from aiims ncdc icmr indian academy of pediatrics iap who and the centers for disease control and prevention cdc were present at the meetingmeasures to further strengthen the health infrastructure need for an aggressive awareness campaign to prevent these cases and strengthening the research base to provide sound knowledge on the causes of mortality active collaboration between state and central governments with experts and researchers were some of the other crucial discussion pointsin the spirit of collaborative and cooperative federalism the centre is actively supporting the bihar government in immediate measures to contain aesje and also to search for long term solutions through evidence generated by sound researchtwo central multidisciplinary teams are already stationed in bihar and supporting the government presently senior officers of the union health ministry are in regular communication with the state government and providing all needed technical and other support vardhan assuredthe health minister said the permanent multidisciplinary expert group will meet regularly during the year to monitor recommendations of the two central expert teams presently stationed in muzaffarpur and deliberate upon their findings and suggestions received from other experts in the matterthis group shall formulate recommendations for measures to be taken up in case of an outbreak and for immediate control in addition to a long term understanding about its causes so as to prevent the cases he saidvardhan had on sunday visited the families of the children suffering from suspected aes in bihar and deployed another highlevel multidisciplinary team at the statethe team will undertake the necessary ground work for setting up stateoftheart multidisciplinary research centre at muzaffarpur the ministry had said in a statementthe death toll in aes cases in bihar has climbed to 106 with both the skmch hospital and the privately owned kejriwal hospital in the state reporting one casualty