Bengal addresses issues raised by Central teams in 11-point instruction to major state hospitals .... Bengal government has responded to the shortcomings cited by the Central teams in state’s handling of coronavirus crisis.

Tanmay Chatterjee, HT,  Apr 25, 2020, Kolkata: The West Bengal government on Friday night issued an 11-point instruction to all medical colleges and hospitals dealing with Covid-19 cases, hours after the Inter-ministerial central team (IMCT) visiting the state raised some serious issues involving tests and treatment of patients and sought the state’s explanation.

Till Saturday evening, the number of Covid-19 in the state cases rose to 571, which included 38 new cases, while the death toll stood at 18.

State chief secretary Rajiva Sinha and health department officials met principals and senior doctors of medical colleges and hospitals on Friday evening and issued a series of instructions that said no patient shall be refused treatment and collection of swab samples and test results should be done in around 12 hours. With more and more samples piling up, the process now takes more than two days.

The government also instructed that ambulance must be provided to patients being referred to other hospitals and dead bodies are shifted from wards without delay. The latter was one of the major issues raised by the IMCT which visited Bangur Hospital in Kolkata where a patient had earlier recorded a video of a body lying on a bed. The video went viral on social media. Following this, the government banned the use of mobile phones inside Covid-19 wards in hospitals.

The government also instructed medical colleges and hospitals to ensure that doctors working in emergency and outpatient departments wear protective gear and areas where they work and change clothes are sanitized on a regular basis. The government empowered the heads of the hospitals to temporarily deploy human resource managers.

The state government did not hold a media conference on Saturday and officials were not ready to comment on the new instructions.

Sinha said on Friday that the health department’s audit committee formed on April 3 had reviewed the deaths of 57 persons who tested positive for Covid-19 and concluded that only 18 were caused by the virus while the remaining 39 were “due to severe co-morbidial (sic) conditions” and Covid-19 was not the immediate cause of their death. The 39 deaths, Sinha said quoting the report, were caused by several conditions such as renal failure, kidney disease etc.

“We have been asking the audit committee to submit a consolidated report as a lot of questions have been raised from different quarters. The report could have come three days ago. We got it today… We are not in a game of proving anything,” said Sinha, when asked whether the report was a quick response to the queries posed by the Centre’s inter-ministerial teams visiting Bengal.

Criticising the issues raised by the IMCT, Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP and president of the West Bengal chapter of Indian Medical Association, Dr Santanu Sen said, “The team is spreading wrong information. This is an insult to doctors and health workers who are working so hard. They must apologise to the people of Bengal.”

Dr Koushik Chaki, secretary, West Bengal Doctors’ Forum, which has raised several issues with the government said, “The tussle between the state and the centre is uncalled for because the interest of the patients should be the only priority. However, we strongly feel that the audit committee in its present form should be scrapped and its terms of reference changed.