After polio faux pas, govt corrects health report

This is clearly a case of misclassification of death. Such incidents shake up the confidence in our reporting mechanisms. If doctors had suspected smallpox or polio, they should have notified authorities.

that the directorate got it wrong.

Even in its report for the year 2015, the data had attributed 14 deaths to polio and eight in 2014.

Reports of the previous years are not available on the department’s website.

According to official records, the last polio case in Delhi was in June, 2009 and the last polio case in India was recorded in West Bengal on January 13, 2011.

“This is clearly a case of misclassification of death. Such incidents shake up the confidence in our reporting mechanisms. And, even if the doctors had suspected smallpox or polio, they should have notified the appropriate authorities as these are notifiable diseases. We should not be finding out about it in a year end report,” Dr K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), had said.

The day after the Hindustan Times story, the directorate released a statement saying that the two people who had supposedly died of smallpox were from “out of Delhi”, assuring that changes would be made to the report in case of discrepancies.

“After getting clarification/ confirmation from the local bodies, the discrepancies, if any, will be rectified accordingly,” the statement said.