GHS explanation for coronavirus death toll disparity doesn’t add up – CDD Fellow

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

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service Dr. Kuma Aboagye explains that the reason the additional deaths recorded in the Ashanti Region is not reflecting in the national tally is because the number was being audited.

His explanation came after the pressure group OccupyGhana raised concerns that the death figures were being massaged.

Speaking to Starr News, the UK-based Pharmacist said it was not standard practice for cases of COVID-19 related deaths to be audited.

“For me, whether the person died from COVID, with COVID or of COVID is 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. They die of pneumonia, they die of TB, Clostridium difficile etcetera, 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,” Kwame Sarpong Asiedu added.