Jharkhand health minister Banna Gupta’s claim of conducting an audit to counter Centre’s announcement that no Covid deaths were reported for lack of oxygen has hit a hurdle. Gupta also said that the government was conducting an audit on the cause of deaths that occurred during Covid pandemic but there hasn’t been any progress as the districts are yet to collect the data.
Banna Gupta criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday and said that he considered Prime Minister to be responsible for the Covid death due to shortage of oxygen. He said, “PM is solely responsible but former Union health minister Harsh Vardhan was made a scapegoat. The public will not accept this as most of the deaths happened due to shortage of oxygen.”
As per the state health department, the Mission Director (MD) of National Health Mission (NHM) had released orders directing all districts on June 5 this year to conduct Covid death audit where details of all Covid deaths occuring between April 1 and May 21 were to be recorded. Currently, the district officials are yet to connect with the deceased family members, let alone submit any report. The letter of MD NHM, Ravishankar Shukla stated that the deputy commissioners of all districts are required to submit the death survey report in their respective districts in the next seven days.
As per the letter, a five-member committee was engaged to supervise the audit, led by the district reproductive and child health officer (DRCHO) with district surveillance officer, a doctor from medicine department of medical college, district epidemiological officer and district programme manager as its member. This committee was appointed to coordinate the audit and submit the report to the state health department by June 13.
When approached, Ranchi DRCHO Dr Shashi Bhushan Khalko said, “The members of the committee are preparing the list of Covid deaths from our district and once we finalise it, we will be contacting the patient’s kin too.” When asked about the tentative time by which the audit will be finalised, he refrained from quoting a timeframe.
The MD, NHM, Umashankar Singh said, “We are yet to receive the reports from a few districts and we have instructed them to complete the exercise at the earliest.”
It is noteworthy that the state capital Ranchi recorded the maximum number of Covid deaths as 1,221 died from the deadly virus infection between April 1 and May 21. The total number of fatality cases reported was 3,646 during that course of time in the state.
