Even as the number of COVID-19 cases in the city declined significantly since June, much to the fear of BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), its mortality rate has remained high. Alarmed by this, the civic body has decided to intensify its Save Lives strategy.
The civic body will now be holding a weekly review of all the private and civic hospitals that have registered the highest death rates in that particular week. Ten hospitals with the highest death percentage will be picked every week. Team of specialist doctors have been pitched in to guide the civic body to identify hospitals.
"We will zero in on 10 private and public hospitals every ten days or a fortnight and hold meetings with the senior doctors and management of these hospitals to investigate the reasons for the high number of deaths. The treatment protocol will be studied. We will verify if the treatment was timely and as per the protocol. With the help of the specialist doctors, we will help the hospitals give instructions on changes/rectifications to be made in the line of treatment to arrest the number of deaths due to the virus. We will take stringent action against hospitals found to be flouting norms and protocol,” a senior BMC official said.
The overall death of India has dipped below 2 per cent, while Maharashtra’s death rate stands at 3.4 per cent. However, Mumbai's current death rate is 5.5 per cent, after Ahmedabad’s which is 5.9 per cent. This has become a major cause for concern for BMC officials and the health department.
“Many smaller private hospitals seem to be admitting critical patients. At their weekly review meeting, these issues will be investigated and reviewed. The first review meeting was held on Friday,” the official said.
According to BMC data, July alone saw a death rate of 4.9 per cent, with a total of 1,796 deaths, which comes to an average 55 to 58 deaths per day. As on August 14, the city had reported 47 deaths, taking the overall death toll of the city to 7,035 deaths with more than 1.28 lakh COVID-19 positive patients.
“Starting this month, we have started monitoring hospitals very closely and monitoring the line of treatment followed by them too. By the end of this month, we are aiming at bringing down mortality to 3 per cent,” BMC Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal said.
