Bhopal: Health department is not a counter to count dead bodies, says additional chief secretary Suleman

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Additional chief secretary, health, Mohammed Suleman denied that there was pressure from state government to hide facts on Covid deaths.

He was responding to audience’s questions during a session at Bhopal Literature and Art Festival.

“Health department is not a counter to count dead bodies. It is counter of patients. It is someone else’s job to tell about the dead bodies,” he said in reply to a question whether department concealed actual figures of Covid deaths. During second Covid wave, there were allegations that health department did not provide correct figures of deaths. But bodies, which were brought to crematorium revealed a different story.

Responding to another question, he said, “We had to switch over from vaccination of adults to kids. So all of sudden, we had to change our mindset to handle things. So, from opening vaccination centre to convincing people for vaccination proved hard nut to crack for us.”

“Initially, we had to wait for beneficiaries. But later, we administered 28 lakh doses in a day, which is a great achievement for state. It boosted immunity and we could handle Omicron variant in third wave,” Suleman added.

Suleman recalled having 500 meetings with CM to tide over corona wave. “We have 2100 ICU beds in the state. Initially, only one medical college had facilities of liquid oxygen of 1 ton but now 500 tons liquid oxygen is available in hospitals attached to medical colleges in the state,” he said replying to a question about health care status in state.