To meet testing target, UP doctor gives his sample 15X

Mathura (Uttar Pradesh), Sep 22 (IANS) In a shocking incident, a video clip of a Mathura doctor giving more than 15 of his own samples for conducting Corona test for completing the sampling target, has gone viral on social media.

The video that first came to light on Sunday is from the Baldeo community health centre and samples of Rajkumar Saraswat were seen being taken by a health worker. The samples were sent for tests with fake names to the CMO office.

In the video, Saraswat himself admitted that he is giving his own sample, as the number of samples collected are less than the target set by the chief medical officer's (CMO) office.

In the video, one of the health workers can be heard advising him not to conduct so many tests on himself, as it could land him in trouble. The video has now been taken off the social media

Another doctor from the same community centre, Amit, filed a complaint with the CMO regarding this. According to Amit, he was assigned the job of collecting samples for Covid-19 on July 27. He alleged that CHC in charge Yogendra Singh Rana pressurized all contractual employees including him to conduct fake sampling, if patients were not coming to the centre for tests.

He also alleged that corona positive patients were being home isolated with his fake signatures.

He said that the CHC in-charge threatened them to conduct the target number of tests or else their contract would be terminated. Additional CMO Rajiv Gupta, who is also a nodal officer of district-level Infection prevention committee of Covid-19, said that the matter is being investigated.

"Action will be taken against the health official if he is found guilty," he said.

He said that there are two teams working for collecting samples -- a mobile team, which conducts random sampling and the other is a static team that takes samples of the patients, who visit the centre for tests.