Health officials in Diamond Harbour organised a special camp on Tuesday to distribute disability-certificates to 58 persons who lost their limbs following leprosy.

Sources said this was the first time when the health department organised such a special camp to distribute documents among leprosy patients to help them get various government benefits, including a monthly pension.

“We identified around 144 such persons who lost their limbs from leprosy. We handed over certificates to 58 such persons. The rest will get them shortly,” said Jayanta Sukul, the chief medical officer of health in Diamond Harbour.

Diamond Harbour is a health district. Health officials said that all other health districts have been asked to arrange similar camps.

“There are complaints that many leprosy patients are harassed when they seek their disability certificate through the normal process. That’s why have planned to organise such special camps in districts to provide them the documents,” said a senior health official.

230 new Covid cases in Bengal

Bengal on Wednesday reported 230 Covid-19 infections, 240 recoveries and two deaths.

Currently, there are 1,953 active cases in the state: 1,884 in home isolation and 69 in hospitals, according to a state bulletin.

The state’s recovery rate was 98.89 per cent and mortality rate 1.02 per cent on Wednesday. Case positivity rate stood at 2.61 per cent on a day 8,796 samples were tested.

Since the pandemic broke out in 2020, Bengal has so far recorded 21,08,418 cases, 20,84,986 recoveries and 21,479 deaths.

Our Correspondent