The Indian Medical Association on Wednesday refuted the Centre’s data on the deaths of doctors due to the coronavirus. While the government put the number at 162, the association said that 734 doctors in the country had died due to the infection so far.

Minister of State for Health Ashwini Kumar Choubey had provided the numbers in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, PTI reported. He said that apart from 162 doctors, 107 nurses and 44 Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHA workers had also died due to the infection.

IMA, which represents 3.5 lakh doctors across the country, said it was shocked about the underreporting of the deaths. “734 doctors lost their lives due to Covid-19 in our country as of today [Wednesday] out of which 431 are general practitioners, who are the first point of contact for the people,” IMA said in a letter addressed to Choubey. “Sadly, 25 doctors are below 35 years of age.”

IMA criticised the government for not accurately recording the deaths. “It is unfortunate that in a devastating pandemic, the frontline warriors of modern medicine had fought with altruism and in the bargain lost their lives, but the roll of honour or the appropriate data on these fatalities were not documented by the government of India,” it said. “We strongly condemn the apathy of the government in verifying the data given by the Indian Medical Association and also delay in disbursing the Solatium for the COVID Martyr’s families.”

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The medical association demanded that the government set up a high-level committee to thoroughly study data on the deaths of doctors and speed up the process of providing compensation to their families.

IMA National President Dr JA Jayalal told the The Print that the association had submitted relevant data to the government twice – in November and January. “We submitted it [the data] voluntarily after the government announced in September that they didn’t have data on doctors who died on duty,” Jayalal said.

In October, the association published a list showing that over 500 doctors had died due to the infection. It also criticised the Centre for its indifference towards frontline workers.

India has so far reported 1,07,90,183 coronavirus cases and 1,54,703 deaths. More than 1.04 people in the country have recovered from the infection. Over 44 lakh health and frontline workers have been vaccinated so far.