NEW DELHI, Oct 2: On a day when India is set to cross one lakh mark in the number of deaths in COVID-19, the Indian Medical Association said more than 500 doctors have succumbed to the pandemic while treating the Corona patients in the country so far. “The actual number may still be much higher,” the IMA president Rajan Sharma said.
India on Friday recorded cumulative 99,773 deaths in COVID-19 even as the number of active cases registered at 942,217 remained less than 10 lakh mark for the 11th consecutive day.
Releasing the updated list of the IMA on Friday, Sharma said, “Our latest figures say 515 doctors treating Covid-19 patients have been martyred in the country so far. And these are all allopathic doctors that we have identified through our various branches of IMA — there are 1,746 branches functional across the country. The number could actually be much higher.”
He was unhappy that less than half of the claims have either been settled or under process of being settled by the government to compensate Covid-19 doctors who have lost their lives due to the viral infection.
According to IMA database, the doctor patient ratio is 1:194. A majority of doctors (201) were in the age group of 60 and 70 years, followed by 171 killed in the age bracket of 50 to 60 years. Above 70 years of age were 66 doctors, and 59 doctors were between 35 and 50 years of age. At least 18 doctors who died were less than 35 years of age.
The government, however, has maintained that there is no central database to provide exact number of doctors who lost their lives on line of duty.
The minister of state for health, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, recently said in Parliament that public health and hospitals came under states, so the Centre was not maintaining any such database.
The only record that is being maintained is the number of compensations being processed under government’s insurance scheme for healthcare workers in this pandemic— Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana package.
On the Covid-19 media briefing on September 22, the Union secretary for health, Rajesh Bhushan, had mentioned that 242 claims under the scheme had either been processed or were under process.
“We are closely monitoring the data under PM’s pandemic response package. There is an insurance cover amounting to ₹50 lakh for all frontline health care workers, and this has recently been extended till March 2021. Under this package, 62 claims have been settled, more than 130 claims are being processed… and above 50 claims that are yet to come from states,” Bhushan had said.
Strongly criticizing the government, Sharma said, “How can the Centre wash their hands of their responsibility. How is it possible that they cannot maintain a database at the central level when you need an Aadhar Card to get tested for Covid-19 through reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test. How difficult can it be to get them?”
(Manas Dasgupta)