INDIA: Healthcare Inequities Exposed by COVID-19 Pandemic

Migrant labourers wait in queues in Kashmir in order to travel back to their homes. The second wave of COVID-19 in India has seen masses of people leave cities and towns to return to their rural homes. Credit: Umer Asif/IPSBy Ranjit DevrajNEW DELHI, Apr 29 2022 (IPS) Public health specialists say that an ongoing wrangle between the Indian government and the World Health Organization (WHO) over the COVID-19 death toll in this country is symptomatic of a long-ailing public health delivery system. India has consistently challenged estimates published by leading scientific journals such as the Lancet, which placed the number of excess deaths in the country at four million from 1 Jan 2020 to 31 Dec 2021. “You can argue till the cows come home but the figures are going to be in the range of four to five million deaths as shown in several studies and any contestation would require robust data rather than bland denials.” On 16 April an official note from the Press Information Bureau in response to a New York Times article said, “India’s basic objection has not been with the results (whatever they might have been) but rather the methodology adopted for the same.” India’s concern was that the projected estimates in the article, titled “India Is Stalling the WHO’s Efforts to Make Global COVID Death Toll Public,” for a country of its geographical size and population could not be done in the same way as for smaller countries. “Such one size fit all approach and models...
Source: IPS Inter Press Service - Health - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Asia-Pacific COVID-19 Headlines Health Poverty & SDGs Source Type: news