10 Doctors From Telangana Died Due To COVID-19: Indian Medical Association

HYDERABAD: At least 10 doctors from Telangana died due to Covid-19, according to the list prepared by the Indian Medical Association (IMA) of 382 "martyred" doctors.

The doctors who died are Dr Nalinikanth of Armoor in Nizamabad, Dr Bhooma Reddy, Dr G Sreenivas and Dr Ayub Khan of Warangal, Dr Shankar Rao of Siddipet, Dr B Raghavendra Rao of Vikarabad, Dr Puli Vittal of Sircilla and Dr Hari Kumar, Dr Gnaneshwar Rao Bandari and Dr KVR Prasad from Hyderabad.

However, only three doctors from Telangana have received the Rs 50 lakh insurance from the Centre under ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package  for Health Workers Fighting  Covid-19’.

Dr Sanjeev Singh Yadav, Secretary of IMA-Telangana, told TNIE, “We have submitted a representation to the TS Health Minister that the government must provide Rs 1 crore to doctors who die of Covid-19 but there has been no response.”

After the health ministry said Centre does not maintain data of healthcare workers who died due to Covid-19, the IMA has published a list of 382 doctors who died due to the disease and demanded that they be treated as “martyrs”.

When asked about the the number of healthcare staff, including doctors, nurses, support staff and ASHA workers, who died from Covid, Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey said on Tuesday that health is a state subject and such data is not maintained at Central level by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

IMA called Choubey’s statement an “abdication of duty and abandonment of the national heroes who have stood up for our people”. “The IMA finds it strange that after having formulated an unfriendly partial insurance scheme for the bereaved families to struggle with the ignominy of the government disowning them altogether stares at them,” it said, according to PTI.

According to the medical body’s data on 16 September, as many as 2,238 doctors were infected with the disease and of them 382 lost their lives, a senior official of the doctors’ body was quoted as saying by PTI.

“To feign that this information doesn’t merit the attention of the nation is abominable,” the medical body said and added that “if the government doesn’t maintain the statistics of the total number of doctors and healthcare workers infected by Covid- 19 and the statistics of how many of them sacrificed their life due to the pandemic, it loses the moral authority to administer the Epidemic Act 1897 and the Disaster Management Act.”