More Than a Statistic: Doctors Who Lost Their Lives to COVID-19

The Quint pays tribute to the doctors who have died of COVID-19.

One Lakh COVID-19 deaths in India: A tribute to the doctors lost to the pandemic.

(Photo: iStock, Altered by The Quint)

Video Editor: Puneet Bhatia

Video Producer: Vaishali Sood

Over one lakh people have died of COVID-19 in India in the last 9 months, even as India's trajectory to the top of the coronavirus chart continues unabated. Among them are countless healthcare workers fighting from the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Throughout this period, the central government has consistently maintained that health is a state subject and they have no data of the deaths of healthcare workers. Doctors, nurses, ward workers, cleaners, hospital administration, working endlessly, tirelessly, without a breather, but their deaths have not been counted.

The Indian Medical Association called out the government for its callous response to the lives lost and released a list of 382 doctors who died of COVID-19. Unfortunately no such lists exist for other healthcare workers.

Laid down neatly, in an excel file, are a list of names, ages and places, each column telling its own story. A 27-year-old young resident in a COVID ward in Delhi, a 55-year-old doctor in Tamil Nadu denied dignity in death, an 81-year-old veteran not giving up on his patients, a 33-year-old pregnant doctor in Maharashtra.

They are not nameless, their lives matter, their death counts.

This is The Quint's tribute to the doctors lost to the pandemic.