How Ghana's COVID-19 death figures are recorded

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) says it is not under-reporting the COVID-19 death figures as purported by pressure group, Occupy Ghana.

According to the Service, “no one is deliberately holding numbers”, rather it does an auditing of the numbers reported by the regions before they are added to the national tally.

Ghana as at Tuesday, June 16, had recorded 58 COVID-19 deaths.

But Occupy Ghana in a statement released on Monday claimed that the figures were being "massaged" as the death toll from some regions did not correspond to the total number of deaths in the country.

According to the group, although the total number of deaths from the Ashanti Region as at Saturday, June 13, stood at 38, only 20 had been added to the national count.

Read also

Ghana records 229 new COVID-19 cases, recoveries increase to 4,326

COVID-19 death figures are being 'massaged' – Occupy Ghana

Responding to the concerns raised by Occupy Ghana, the Director General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kumah Aboagye, at a press conference on Tuesday explained that although some regions may be reporting certain death figures, they needed to be validated before they are added to the national toll.

He explained that, “once a death is reported in a region, we have a case management team that does audit and clinical conferencing with them to see what was the cause of death, how was it managed. Was it all the circumstances? As soon as that is that, they are added.”

“So you may see a region reporting a certain number, we are not only interested in the number. We want to know whether is treatment appropriate and where are they coming from. I want to say that no one is deliberating holding numbers. So as and when the case management team has a conference with the region, we clear and the numbers is added to our report,” he added.