Re: India Malaria 2013
Another excellent report out of India - go read the whole thing! - Ro
Updated: September 26, 2013 11:43 IST
Fudging biting facts
SUVOJIT BAGCHI
A section of government doctors in Chhattisgarh admits to gross under reporting of malarial deaths in the State
“Is it ever possible to find out the actual number of malarial deaths in Chhattisgarh?” asked an exasperated government doctor, who worked for many years in intensely malaria prone districts of central India.
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“The government will always say that the death is not due to malaria but because of fever of unknown origin. The Health Department refuses to accept [malaria] unless the blood smear test is positive,” said the doctor on conditions of anonymity.
Blood testing facility is a rarity in rural Chhattisgarh. More importantly, malarial parasite is a difficult organism to detect unless repeated tests are conducted, said the doctor.
A number of doctors, working in the State, told The Hindu that health officials often attribute malaria deaths to complications such as renal failure, severe anemia or adult respiratory distress syndrome and remove the “antecedent malaria” as the primary cause of death. “It is somewhat like deaths due to malnutrition. In that, too, the patient dies due to complications like infections, ditto for malaria,” said another doctor.
Ask any officer in the State Health Department, they will all privately agree that malarial deaths are grossly underreported and that they themselves don’t appreciate any of the subordinate staff reporting such deaths.
Moreover, systematic underreporting of malaria has totally ruined the resource base. If a district underreports malaria, it gets less resource like bed nets, drugs or diagnostics and thus weakens its own resource base.
“Finally, nobody would ever know the actual number of deaths [as people are not aware of blood tests in rural areas] and the Health Department will keep coming up with ridiculous death figures,” the government doctor said.
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Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committees (VHSNC), working under NRHM, are mandated to record rural deaths in the State. Data released by VHSNC shows that 2,467 persons, including a large number of children, died from malaria or fever in 2012.
In the corresponding period, the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme (NVBDCP) announced death of only 90 persons, a number almost 28 times less than the NRHM figure, from malaria in Chhattisgarh. The data was provided by the State Health Department to NVBDCP.
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http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/fudging-biting-facts/article5167830.ece
