MUMBAI: Notification of major diseases such as tuberculosis, diabetes, hypertension and HIV saw a 29% drop in the city in 2020 as pandemic hit, underlining the extent to which diagnosis of non-Covid ailments was crippled.
During the period, deaths due to non-Covid illnesses increased 12%. In the absence of information on ‘causes of death’ though, the BMC is unable to decipher which diseases exactly caused the excess non-Covid deaths.
NGO Praja Foundation that released its white paper on the ‘State of Health in Mumbai’ on Tuesday expressed concern that the corporation was in the dark about details of non-Covid deaths. The report stated there was a 24% increase in total registered deaths in 2020 (1,12,906) over 2019 (91,223) in Mumbai. If the 11,116 deaths due to Covid are excluded, there’s still a 12% jump in non-Covid mortality, which remains unexplained.
“Covid accounted for only 10% deaths in 2020. But, due to the absence of cause of death (CoD) data since January 2020, the BMC doesn’t have an exact breakup of the diseases that caused the remaining 90% non-Covid deaths,” said Milind Mhaske, director, Praja Foundation. Typically, cardiovascular diseases and strokes account for the biggest share of all-cause deaths in Mumbai followed by diabetes, cancer and respiratory diseases. However, due to lack of CoD data for 2020, there is no way to find out whether deaths due to the diseases rose or dipped, he said.
Data does show that fewer people with these ailments got diagnosed in the city last year. The Praja report stated new registrations for diabetes and hypertension dropped 29% and 24% in 2020 over the previous year, while that for tuberculosis fell 28%. The steepest drop was seen in dengue cases at 78%, which the civic body has often attributed to the lockdown. Detection of new HIV cases too dived 46%.
The BMC was in possession of CoD data till the birth and death registrations were transferred to the Civil Registration System (CRS) of the Centre in January 2016. Thereafter, it claimed to no longer have access to CoD data. “Without real-time CoD data, how can the corporation plan interventions,” said Mangesh Pednekar, director, Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health.
Dr Mangala Gomare, BMC executive health officer, said they have written to the Centre through the state asking for access to the CoD data. Mhaske said several states have started parallel CoD systems.
Praja officials said BMC continues to grapple with 31% vacant posts in public health department and medical colleges. “Hiring manpower overnight, which we saw in the pandemic, cannot be an emergency activity,” Pednekar said.
