Patna’s super babu

On April 17, at 2.30 PM, a Twitter user tagged Bihar principal secretary of health, Sanjay Kumar, on a post linking to a news report about the death of a 13-year-old girl in Nawada district hospital. The document from the civil surgeon detailed that the 13-year-old had been suffering from a malignant tumour and had died just two hours after admission to the hospital, despite oxygen support. That is how he knew about a non-COVID -19 death in Nawada, at a time when the entire state administration is preoccupied with the battle against the coronavirus,” says a doctor in Patna. From posting regular daily updates on Twitter—even at midnight, if a spike is registered in COVID-19 cases—to informing the public about purchase orders for N-95 masks, to presenting updated details about the number of suspected COVID-19 cases found during the department’s door-to-door screening, and on to sharing WhatsApp messages from the AIIMS director about sampling issues, Kumar has injected a new meaning to the concept of transparency. The idea, a brainchild of chief minister Nitish Kumar, is to identify suspected cases as early as possible. From coordinating with the Gates foundation—which donated 15,000 testing kits to the state—to making Bihar’s private hospitals start treating patients, and from banning khainee (smokeless tobacco) in Bihar to lauding the health workers working on the door-to-door screening exercise, the IAS officer has been doing everything to ramp up the combined impact against COVID-19. In this enormous effort, he quotes US President Harry S. Truman: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit” Many people from the state travel to and from the Middle East, and Bihar’s long, porous border with Nepal adds to the international movement. “The department is working on a short and long-term plan to augment human resources and also make the existing services more efficient through training and better management practices.” So, what is strategy for the coming days? The officer also credits his better half, Shalini, for his ability to put in the long hours, saying that her support has been essential.