Mizoram links Covid deaths to blockade
Patients dying due to shortage of medicines: Mizoram
On Saturday, after Mizoram health minister R. Lalthangliana blamed the blockade in Assam for the recent deaths of Covid patients in Mizoram, saying, “Covid patients are dying for want of medicines. Seriously ill patients are in dire need of life-saving drugs...” Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma scurried to salvage the situation.
Two Assam cabinet ministers Ashok Singhal and Parimal Suklbaidya were rushed to ensure the opening of the road to Mizoram which is jostling with an unprecedented crisis in food, fuel, medicine and healthcare supplies for the last two weeks due to economic blockade by civilians.
The ministers will engage with organisations conducting the protest and supporting the economic blockade at Lailapur along the Assam-Mizoram border.
Pressure groups and organisations protesting against the neighbouring state have asserted that the protests will continue until Mizoram’s police continue to encroach in Assam’s territory.
Though he did not specify the number of deaths of Covid patients due to shortage of medicines, Mizoram’s department of information and public relation (DIPR) claimed that at least 25 Covid patients have died since the blockade started.
“They had been admitted to hospitals and their condition was already serious. As our health minister said, the shortage of medicines, arising due to economic blockade, was also a factor that led to many deaths,” the deputy director of DIPR told reporters.
The blockade was imposed by some organisations in Assam’s Barak Valley in protest against the July 26 border skirmishes that left six Assam Police personnel dead and scores of others, including the superintendent of police of Assam’s Cachar district, injured.
The Mizoram health minister, while appealing to neighbouring state and ministry of home affairs to clear the blockade, said that it was unfortunate that a number of trucks carrying life-saving drugs, medicines and oxygen cylinders are still stuck at the interstate border.
“With the rise in the number of Covid cases, we are finding it very difficult to manage patients who are in dire need of oxygen given the limited supply due to the blockade. The supply of essential medicines, including PPE kits, are still struck at the border,” he regretted.