When Covid-19 arrived on Indian shores, the entire government health sector of India had plunged into chaos, trying to gear up to contain the onslaught of the disease. However, with the entire health machinery becoming dedicated to fighting Covid-19, the patients suffering from other illnesses have had to pay the price, with their lives.
Over 145 tuberculosis patients have died in the past 54 days in Agra. The toll is more than six times the usual number of deaths from TB in the city.
Citing the reason behind the huge number of deaths from an illness that is curable in most cases, relatives of the deceased patients said that the health department had stopped providing consultancy and medicines to the TB patients and added that most of them died due to the lack of medicines.
In comparison to the lockdown period, during which over 145 patients succumbed to the illness, only 27 patients had died due to TB between January 1 and March 19. These figures have been revealed on the government portal designed to track TB patients.
Between January 1 to May 12, a total of 5,817 patients were registered on the government portal, of which 290 patients did not receive any treatment during the same period. Out of the 507 patients whose health status was posted on the portal, only seven were cured, while 172 died. Of the 172, 145 died during the lockdown period.
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