Government on Sunday asked all the districts in the State to identify the hospitals that reported unusually high number of deaths – Covid as well as non-Covid – from April 1 to May 21 and conduct a thorough audit of the fatalities in order to get an idea of the various circumstances that led to the death of patients.
National Health Mission (NHM) Director Ravi Shankar Shukla, in a letter addressed to the deputy commissioners of all the 24 districts, asked them to identify such hospitals at their own level and begin the audit.
“Private hospitals may also come under the ambit of the audit if the concerned deputy commissioner finds it necessary. It would be a detailed study including the cause of death, medicines administered, comorbid conditions and other factors,” said the nodal officer for the IEC wing of the health department, Dr. Siddharth Tripathi.
In the letter addressed to the DCs on Sunday, the NHM suggested the administration in the various districts to form teams comprising officials from the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP), epidemiologists, members of World Health Organisation and civil societies to conduct the death audit.
The State has already been surveying rural households in Jharkhand to gather data of deaths caused during the pandemic. The latest directive, however, specifically aims at auditing the deaths reported in hospitals, officials said.
During the ongoing survey, the government has found that more than 25,000 deaths were reported in rural areas from the period of April 1 to May 31, when the second wave of Covid-19 wreaked havoc on Jharkhand. The figure includes Covid as well as non-Covid deaths. The state, however, is yet to officially release the figures.
As per government data, at least 5046 Jharkhandis have died due to Covid-19 so far. Most of the deceased, officials said, died during treatment in hospitals. However, data on the total deaths reported during this period was not available on Sunday.
A highly placed source in the health department said that some hospitals had reported a higher number of deaths during the second wave of Covid-19 compared to other hospitals in the district. While some hospitals may have reported higher numbers of deaths as critical patients were referred to these hospitals from different parts of the state, the audit will give a clearer picture of the various causes of deaths reported during the second wave of the pandemic, he said.