Deadly rabies spares 43 of 51 patients in Tamil Nadu hospitals

CHENNAI: Numbers don't lie. Or maybe they do when it comes to keeping count of rabies deaths in Tamil Nadu. Records with the directorate of medical education (DME) show that state-run medical college hospitals recorded at least 51 people admitted with rabies between January 2018 and November 2018. And, only eight of them died, according to official records.
"Rabies is nearly always fatal. You can count the number of survivors across the globe on the fingers of one hand. And there is no literature of survivors in India," said infectious diseases expert Dr V Ramasubramanian.
So how come these 43 people survived? Do the doctors deserve the Nobel Prize for medicine? A TOI investigation, however, revealed that the numbers just don't add up. Under-reporting and sloppy book-keeping is rampant. And nobody tracks those who run away from hospitals as happened in Coimbatore.
According to the directorate of public health, at least two people died of rabies every month in Tamil Nadu in 2018. And, hospitals across the state notified 31 rabies deaths during the year compared to 16 deaths in 2017.
A little digging showed that data collection is flawed. The 51 cases that DME recorded did not include nine patients at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in 2018. "The deaths of all nine were certified by the Chennai corporation. But the civic body may not record them as rabies cases in the district if the dog had bitten the patients in neighbouring Kancheepuram or Tiruvallur. We don't know if information reached Kancheepuram or Tiruvallur officials," said a senior doctor at the GH, who did not want to be quoted.
This would also explain what happened to the 43 rabies-infected patients about whose fate the DME records are silent.