Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal has formed a 250-member team of doctors, mostly private practitioners and faculty members of medical colleges, who will now visit all Covid hospitals in the state to monitor treatment protocols and report back to the government.
The move comes after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee publicly questioned the handling of Covid cases in the state. In a televised meeting with government doctors on 8 July, Banerjee expressed her displeasure over the rising number of deaths.
The situation, however, has only spiralled since the meeting.
The state’s own Covid-19 bulletin reveals that there has been a sharp spike in Covid-19 deaths in July.
The state had recorded 668 deaths in the three months of April, May and June. But that figure rose to 757 deaths by 5 July, 932 deaths by 12 July, 1,112 by 19 July and 1,372 by 26 July.
As of 2 August, the state recorded 1,678 deaths. It is now seventh in the country in terms of death toll.
Speaking to ThePrint, a senior official in the state’s health department said the decision to form the 250-member team is to primarily ‘minimise’ the death rate, and as a result, members of the team will visit hospitals and monitor treatment protocols.
“Even though our expert committee issues advisories to the Covid hospitals on managing the cases efficiently every day, the government thinks some of the hospitals need supervision,” the official said.
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What the team is expected to do
The government formed the 250-member team through an order dated 29 July, which said “faculties of different medical colleges and philanthropic doctors” would coordinate with the management of Covid hospitals in the state.
“The doctors will form teams, each having at least three members, who will visit the hospitals, satellite centres and safe homes that are engaged in treating Covid-19 patients,” the order added.
The health department official explained that these doctors will visit the hospitals as a team, talk to the treating doctors, patients and administrative officials. They would then submit a report.
“During their visit to the hospitals, they will enter the ward, examine patients, especially the critical ones including those in the CCU,” the order said. “They will interact with the senior doctors and administrators and guide them for betterment of the overall management.The team will submit the visit report along with recommendations after the visits.”
There is, however, no clarity on how long the team of doctors will be engaged by the government. Senior IAS officer, Subhanjan Das, has been appointed by the government to coordinate between the doctors and the government. They are to be split into multiple teams for different zones and districts.
Among those now called up for duty is Dr Subrata Pal, professor of medicine at the NRS Medical College and Hospital. “Our primary concern is to bring down the number of deaths,” he told ThePrint. “The death rate was also high in Bengal initially but that has gone down. We will talk to the treating doctors, the patients and the administrators. We will guide them if needed.”
About the rising infection rate, Dr Pal said, “We cannot control infection rate. For that, a different mechanism is needed. But our mandate is to improve the patient outcome.”
Dr Abhijit Choudhury, member of the chief minister’s task force, said efforts have to be made to fight stigma to control the mortality rate.
“The mortality rate will go up again if we fail to fight the stigma of being infected with Covid. I know many are not able to get tests done for a long time, but there are many who are hiding the disease and symptoms. The second lot is dangerous for controlling the disease. We are targeting these people,” said Choudhury, who is also the brain behind the Covid Care Network, an NGO aligned with the state government.
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