The Bengal health department set a two-week deadline from August 26 for completion of a door-to-door state-wide survey to identify people with comorbidities of Covid-19 for better management of the pandemic and lowering of the toll from the disease.

The deadline was issued on Monday for completion of the survey by September 9. The order was issued by Ajay Chakraborty, the director of health services, to all chief medical officers of health.

In Bengal, 87 per cent of all pandemic deaths were attributed to comorbidities.

“We want to get the database done immediately as it would be easier for us to provide special care to persons with comorbidities because the rate of mortality is the highest among them. All districts have already started the survey and have been asked to send their reports in time,” said Chakraborty.

In the order, Chakraborty asked all district health units to upload the data and share the same with state officials within the deadline.

In Covid-19, comorbidities are underlying health disorders, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or kidney ailments. Most pandemic deaths around the world have been of infected persons with comorbidities. Besides, those with comorbidities have been found more likely to develop severe illness from the pathogen.

Physicians say this makes it important for patients with such underlying health disorders to take special care to manage their illness during a pandemic such as this.

In Bengal, hypertension has taken around a fourth of the lives of the Covid-19-infected persons who died, followed by diabetes, which claimed around a fifth, and cardiac ailments, which took around one-tenth of the lives.

Health officials said the government noticed that patients with comorbidities who died had been admitted to a hospital too late.

“If comorbid patients got to a hospital in good time, at least 70 per cent of those lives could have been saved. That is what we are trying to do, going forward,” said an official.

“We plan to regularly call the patients we find from the survey and the Asha (accredited social health activist) workers will take their health report twice a week. It will help us monitor them and hospitalise them in time,” he added.

The health department has given a specific format to Asha workers, in which one sheet will be dedicated for each family. There are seven kinds of diseases listed in the format, including diabetes, hypertension, liver-related disease and cancer. The list will also include the name and contact number of the head of the family.

Asha workers on ground claimed that the stipulated time span was not sufficient for them. “We have other workers apart from those enlisted for this survey and it became an additional load on us to finish the survey and send the data within two weeks,” said an Asha worker in Birbhum’s Suri.

“However, we are trying our best to meet the deadline.”

However, a senior health official said Asha workers regularly visited households to monitor the health of Ili (influenza-like illness) and Sari (severe acute respiratory illness) patients since the beginning of the pandemic in the state.

“The work has already started and we will send all reports to the state authorities in time,” said Himardi Ari, chief medical officer (health) of Birbhum.