After the Health Ministry said this week that the centre does not maintain data of healthcare workers who died due to Covid-19, the Indian Medical Association (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 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.

“However, database of those seeking relief under the ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Insurance Package’ is maintained at national level,” he said and added that relatives of 155 healthcare workers sought relief under the package. 

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.