Jharkhand health department to conduct survey of Covid deaths to draw policy for relief package

RANCHI: The Jharkhand government is going to conduct a socio-economic survey in the state to assess the financial damages faced by families during the treatment of Covid-19 and the long-term impact of death of earning members on families.
The survey has to be completed within a fortnight and is aimed at collecting information about the social and economic status of the families that have lost their earning members dued to Covid-19. The findings of the survey will be incorporated while drafting a welfare scheme which will be launched by the state government to provide assistance to such families.
As per state health department records, a total of 3,983 people succumbed to the virus between March 15 and June 9 this year. The proposed welfare scheme which will be formulated based on the data collected in the survey aims at providing financial stability to these families.
A letter in this regard was issued by additional chief secretary (health) Arun Kumar Singh directing all deputy commissioners to monitor the survey on a personal level and send the collated information to the state unit of NHM by June 25.
According to Singh’s letter, district-level representatives of World Health Organization (WHO) will also be pooled in for the work and a detailed questionnaire has been provided to districts to collect the exact information about the deceased and the status of the family members.
Talking to TOI, Singh said: “The survey will provide us exact insights on the condition of families that have been hit due to Covid-19 and this will help us in forming a robust policy to help distressed families. I have also directed the authorities that during the course of survey if they come across a family which is in distress they should immediately make interim arrangements for them as per their needs.”
The detailed questionnaire, which is a blue print for the survey, aims at collecting personal as well as health care history of the deceased. Apart from that, the survey will collect information like the annual income of the deceased, profession which he/she was engaged in and the number of dependents of the deceased.
The survey will also capture details about whether the family has been covered under any social welfare schemes of state/central government and if not whether they are eligible for the same or not. Apart from this, the survey teams have also been directed to enlist whether the families are covered under National Food Security Act or not and do they own any agricultural land or not.
According to sources in the health department, the proposed scheme will be a direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme.
Meanwhile, distressed families that have been hit hard and have lost everything during the pandemic saw this as a ray of hope. “There have been three deaths in my neighbour’s family which include an elderly couple and their son who was around 38 years old. They have lost all their life savings on the treatment of the 38 year old but as his lungs had got damaged he couldn’t survive. He has a 15-year-old daughter who needs to be taken care of. So I think the government must bring in educational reforms, too, in the proposed welfare policy,” said Deepak Kumar, a resident from Lalpur area.