Jharkhand Cov death audit hits zero-data wall

Ranchi: Jharkhand health minister Banna Gupta’s claim of conducting a death audit to counter the Centre’s announcement that no Covid deaths were reported for lack of oxygen has hit a hurdle.
Gupta had said that the state government was conducting a death audit of Covid-19 victims but has made no headway as the districts are yet to collect the data.
Launching an all-out attack against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gupta on Friday held the Prime Minister responsible for the deaths of Covid patients for want of oxygen. “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,” Gupta said.
According to the state health department, an order was issued by missoion director (MD), National Health Mission (NHM), to all the districts on June 5 this year to conduct an audit of all Covid deaths reported between April 1 and May 21. However, the district officials are yet to contact the family members of the deceased, let alone submit any report.
According to the letter issued by the then MD NHM Ravishankar Shukla, the deputy commissioners of all districts were directed to submit a report after conducting the death audit in their respective districts within seven days.
According to the letter, a five-member committee was formed to conduct the audit which is headed 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 responsible to conduct the audit and send it to the state health department by June 13 according to the order.
However, when contacted, 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.”
Asked about the tentative time for the completion of audit, he expressed his inability to provide a timeframe. Notably, state capital Ranchi has reported the maximum Covid deaths as 1,221 people succumbed to the virus between April 1 and May 21. The total number of deaths due to Covid during that period in the state is 3,646.
On being contacted, current 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.”