Politics

CDD fellow challenges GHS explanation on COVID-19 death toll disparity

Kwame Sarpong Asiedu, a Health analyst and a fellow of the Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana (CDD-Ghana), has challenged the Ghana Health Service (GHS) explanation for the disparity for the country’s COVID-19 death toll which he maintains does not add up.

He noted that it was not standard practice for cases of COVID-19 related deaths to be audited and insisted that whether a person died from COVID-19, with COVID-19 or of COVID-19 was much ado about nothing.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’ve not seen any country which has tried to make this disparity because if you try to make this disparity then we should discard all our AIDS data and say nobody has died of AIDS,” Mr Asiedu posited.

Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, explained that the reason the additional deaths recorded in the Ashanti Region was not reflecting in the national tally was because the number was being audited and his explanation came after the pressure group, OccupyGhana raised concerns that the death figures were being massaged.

According to Mr Asiedu, “they die of pneumonia, they die of Tuberculosis, Clostridium difficile among others and then disaggregate the data that way, that will be easier, AIDS never killed anybody and that is the thing I’m struggling to deal with and that’s why I try to be basic so that we can all understand the conversation we are having.

“We are dealing with a virus here it doesn’t kill anybody, it compromises your system that is why from the outset I argue that I wasn’t too fixated on our case mortality numbers, the problem is the government made a big fuss about our low case mortality numbers and that is why we are all caught up in this much ado about nothing.

“Because, now they are trying to find a reason to keep this number down but unfortunately the reasons don’t add up,” Mr Asiedu added. -starrfmonline.com

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