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As many as 196 doctors have died of Covid-19 in India so far, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) said in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to ensure that doctors and their families are provided adequate care and to extend the state-sponsored medical and life insurance to doctors in all fields. IMA, which represents 350,000 doctors in India, says of the 196 doctors who died of Covid-19, 170 were above 50 years of age and nearly 40% were general practitioners. Since a significant proportion of the population consults a general practitioner when they fall sick, these doctors are the first point of contact to patients who may have been infected with the coronavirus, the IMA said. According to its data, 43 doctors in Tamil Nadu died of Covid-19, the highest among all states.
This even as India struggles to find enough doctors and medical workers to address the still raging pandemic. Going by the union governments statement to parliament last year, Indias doctor-to-patient ratio stands at 1:1445, assuming 80% of all doctors are available at a time. A more pertinent statistics would be the government doctors-to-patient ratio since it is the public hospitals that are taking the brunt of the pandemic in most states. And that ratio is a lowly 1:11,082. Worryingly, IMAs data shows 16 doctors died of Covid-19 in Bihar and 11 in Uttar Pradesh. These states also have the least number of government doctors as a proportion of the population 1:28,391 in Bihar and 1:19,962 in Uttar Pradesh. These states are also seeing a surge in confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, with UP reporting over 4,500 cases on Saturday and Bihar, nearly 4,000.
Further disturbing are the reports that state that the doctors and their family members are not getting beds for admission and deficiency of drugs in most of the cases. The IMA thus requests the government of India to provide adequate attention for the safety and welfare of doctors during the pandemic,” said Dr Rajan Sharma, national president, IMA.