Forgotten frontline warriors

New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) are unable to agree on the number of doctors who died due to Covid-19 over the two years - 2020 to 2022 - when the pandemic ravaged India.

While the Union Health Ministry in the Rajya Sabha said they have no data on the number of doctors who have died during Covid, the IMA, a national organisation of physicians with over 3 lakh members, said over 1600 doctors died during the pandemic.

In a written reply, Minister of State of Health and Family Welfare Dr Bharati Pravin Pawar said "disaggregated data on deaths due to Covid-19 by profession or otherwise is not maintained centrally."

She said as of July 23, a total of 5,25,997 deaths due to Covid-19 (including those of doctors and healthcare workers) have been reported in the country.

The minister was answering a written question on the number of doctors and health workers who have died since March 2020.

In July 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had hailed the contribution of doctors in saving lives from coronavirus and asserted that his government gave paramount importance to augmenting healthcare infrastructure to combat the pandemic. While stressing that losing even one life is saddening, Modi said India saved the lives of lakhs of its people and a big credit for that goes to doctors, healthcare and frontline workers.

Addressing doctors on the occasion of National Doctors' Day, he also highlighted "limitations" of the kind of medical infrastructure that was created in the country over several decades and how medical infrastructure was neglected in earlier times.

"Our government has given paramount priority to healthcare.

Last year, during the 1st wave,

we had allotted Rs 15,000 crore to improve our health infrastructure.