As per the now released World Health Organization (WHO), Covid mortality figures, India ranks the highest globally. However, India has rejected the WHO’s methodology and data to arrive at the numbers.
The global healthcare organization has put India’s Covid death toll at around 4.7 million, which is 10x times the country’s official pandemic toll of 481,486 deaths. These contrasting numbers are for the period, from Jan 1, 2020, to Dec 1, 2021. According to the global body, these deaths are directly due to the disease or indirectly through its impact on healthcare systems and society.
WHO has used a model to calculate what it describes as “Excess Mortality.” as a difference between deaths that occurred and numbers in the absence of pandemic data from earlier years.
Releasing the methodology with which it calculated Excess Mortality, WHO said, “We consider the most complex sub-national scenario in which the number of regions with monthly data varies by month, using India as an example. For India, we use a variety of sources for the registered number of deaths at the state and union territory levels. The information was either reported directly by the states through official reports and automatic vital registration, or by journalists who obtained death registration information through Right To Information requests.”
The Union Health Ministry’s official statement said India has consistently objected to WHO’s projections based on mathematical models. “Despite India’s objection to the process, methodology, and outcome of the modeling exercise, WHO has released the excess mortality estimates without adequately addressing India’s concerns.”
To substantiate its official Covid death toll, the Indian government released Civil Registration Systems (CRS) report on the number of births and deaths by the Registrar General of India (RGI). Further, India’s Health Ministry said, “The CRS data of 2020 published by RGI on May 3, 2022, clearly reveals that the narrative sought to be created based on various modeling estimates of India’s Covid19 deaths being many times the reported figure is totally removed from reality.”
“Despite communicating this data to WHO for supporting their publication, which for reasons best known to them conveniently chose to ignore the available data submitted by India and published the excess mortality estimates for which India has consistently questioned the methodology, source of the data, and the outcomes,” it added.
However, citing its data, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has called all nations to invest in “more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems.” He also said that WHO is committed to working with them on this.
Reference:
Business Standard
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