Along with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Uttar Pradesh Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh has been in the cross-hairs following the child deaths in Gorakhpur. He spoke to BusinessLine on how the State government has improved figures to show in its four-month tenure, and why he thinks oxygen failure was not to blame for the Gorakhpur incident.
How does one explain the high number of deaths from preventable diseases such as Japanese Encephalitis (JE) and Scrub Typhus?Last year, only 55 per cent children between 1-15 were immunised for JE. Since May this year [when the Yogi Adityanath government took office] we have managed to vaccinate 93 lakh children: a 108 per cent strike rate. JE cases have come down.
Now Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) also includes types such as Scrub Typhus, against which there is no vaccination or proper medication. The only way you can prevent it is through cleanliness and we are focused on it.
Through the Centre, Encephalitis Treatment Centres (ETCs) and Paediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) have been created. I have visited Gorakhpur.
I visited ETCs and PICUs; the ventilators were not working. The condition was pathetic. Over 70-80 per cent doctors were posted out because transfer-posting, as you know, has been a big racket under the previous government.
For the next four months, I worked out a plan to ensure that the doctors and paramedical staff trained to tackle JE and AES return to these two commissionerates where the diseases are endemic. I started three-day and week-long training programmes for other doctors. I ensured that the ventilators in these ETCs and PICUs are functional.
That is why there is an 8 per cent drop in AES cases coming to BRD Medical College. This is because more patients are going to ETCs and CHCs [Community Health Centres]. In August, there were 325 deaths. It is unfortunate, but last year, and in 2015, there were over 600-plus deaths in the same period.
Today, the ratio is that 62 per cent treatment is happening at the PHC-level in these seven districts in the two commissionerates.
UP spends just 26 per cent of what a State like Himachal Pradesh does on health. When will you remedy this?It is not going to be easy. We are taking help from the NITI Ayog. They have programmes on health and education. We need to bring in more technology – telemedicine doesn’t work here; neither does tele-radiology, pathology.
We are working more on the PPP [public-private partnership] model. It will be a State-run system. With a population of 22 crore, our budget size should be ₹10 lakh-crore. But it is ₹3 lakh-crore. I have brought it up to ₹4 lakh-crore; this is a quantum jump. Of course, it is also due to the Seventh Pay Commission.
The government has to apply itself and see how we can make the system work without adding more financial resources. Whether it 26 per cent of Himachal Pradesh or not, somebody has to apply himself to the economics. Until such time as we have the financial resources, why shouldn’t we explore the PPP model? Privatisation and PPP cannot be bad words per se.
How can you say that oxygen disruption was not linked to high number of deaths on August 10-11?There was an administrative problem in Gorakpur, but the deaths did not happen because of that. It becomes clear from the timeline. The last death happened at 10.05 pm on August 10 and next death at 5.30 am on August 11. If it was due to lack of oxygen, other children would have died too. There were still 98 children on August 3-4-5 when I went there with [Minister for Medical Education] Ashutosh Tandon. If there was oxygen failure, something should have happened to them as well.