Hospitals mandated to upload cause of death data

Kolkata: The state Health department has given directives to make it mandatory for all the hospitals and health centres to upload information relating to the cause of death of any patients in the department’s portal.

It will be done on a pilot basis in Murshidabad. Later, it will be followed in all the districts.

In many cases, the cause of death of the patients was not properly uploaded in the portal. The Bengal government in 2021 prepared a portal so that the hospitals can upload the data related to birth and death.

However, it was seen that in many cases the cause of death and also the time were not properly mentioned by the hospitals in the portal.

According to data, information relating to the death of 17 lakh people was uploaded in the portal between 2021 and 2023 but in only 3.5 lakh cases the cause of deaths were mentioned. Health department is keen on keeping the records so that it can carry out a survey which may help the department in various ways to find out the trends of ailments.

The Health department while launching the portal had carried out rounds of training for master trainers and health officials, including hospital superintendents and CMOHs and sub-registrars of civic bodies and state urban development authorities.

All DMs were asked to ensure completion of subsequent training by these master trainers to concerned teams from government and private hospitals, urban local bodies and Gram Panchayats.