A human should be the foremost sympathiser and well-wisher for another human as they all are from the same mother and father and hence are joined together by a strong bond. But has it been the case in the past? Or is it happening today? Unfortunately the answer is in the negative. The whole human history is replete with the facts where man has destroyed his own seed by his own hand, by employing various unjust, inappropriate and oppressive actions and has put an indelible blot on the pages of history. With every passing day the blot continues to get darker. Today the new field to put humanity to shame is the field of medicine and treatment.
Man deserves the attention of other men at different times and in different ways. But during ailment, a patient direly needs attention of the doctors, medical stores, clinics, hospitals, check-up centres and pharmaceutical companies. At this point if the patient gets full support from the doctors, along with access to treatment centres and genuine medicines, then the disease begins to vanish and the patient recovers his lost health.
Though some lucky ones do get access to some of the things yet there are many hapless patients in the society who only dream of any such facilities. They die a painful death because of the greed and indifference of those who have the wherewithal to treat them. And finally they die and people close to him could do nothing but to satisfy their feelings by spilling some drops of tears from their eyes.
Poverty is the biggest impediment in the way of treatment and even today our country lacks management in the field of medicine and treatment and the government has failed to deliver. Poor patients buy cheap medicines from small dispensaries and clinics and satisfy themselves that their illness is being treated; however they slowly and gradually march towards their death. An incident of olden days never gets off my mind when a poor Muslim woman of Delhi’s Kucha Pandit area used to come to our house to receive a meagre monthly stipend fixed by Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. One day she appeared after a very long time and on enquiring she replied she was busy with the treatment of her 12 years old daughter. The lady continued with some small scale treatment, though her daughter implored her to look for a good doctor, which she could not afford. Eventually the girl died.
Whenever the girl’s wish for a satisfactory treatment comes in mind, the heart rips apart and pictures of thousands of daughters like her come before my eyes who leave this world with a wish for better treatment in their heart. It is because of the poverty that a youth in the neighbourhood is facing constant pain on a daily basis in his back but could not go for the treatment as the M.R.I. test costs thousands of rupees.
This poverty often drives people towards superstitions and they get involved in the tricks of Tantriks, Taweez, etc., and unknowingly put themselves on the path of destruction. Recently on a visit to see my relative in Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, I met a young man. Few days back I got the sad news that the boy had died. He was alone in Delhi when his health suddenly got deteriorated. Fearing the new city, he went back to his hometown Khalilabad, where his relatives, instead of taking him to a doctor, took him to a grave of some saint and he finally died.
If doctors are sought, then there is no doubt that some doctors attentively attend the patients and try to bring their sound health back, however most of the time, patients do come across many other ailments of the society. If a doctor genuinely gives medicine to patients or prescribes him to take medicines from market, it is not necessary that the medicine would be good and not fake or duplicate. In Delhi’s Bhaghirath Palace, the government raids on the wholesale drugs dealers’ shops have resulted in recovery of duplicate drugs worth crores of rupees. These medicines eventually reach hospitals and pharmacists; however, instead of providing any relief for the patients, they bring them closer to their death. News of unearthing fake drug factories also gives a jolt to the common man. These fake drugs reach government hospitals and dispensaries. On the one hand, drugs make the authorities and those responsible for bringing in medicines to hospitals rich whereas on the other hand it brings death closer to those who take them.
One of my close friends once told me about the level of corruption in the medical department of Uttar Pradesh government. He gave an example and said that a bottle of medicine which costs Rs. 100 does not even contain medicine worth Rs. 5.
How human lives in India are trivialised can be understood from a report released by the ministry of health which says that those medicines which have been banned in the US, Europe and other developed nations because of their side-effects are openly being sold in India. It does not end here, a report published in the Urdu daily Hindustan Express on 25 August, 2012, says that after the multinational companies fetched the permission to test their drugs on people in India; 1317 people have died because of their experiments. In 2010, the central government said in the Parliament that 1700 people died as a result of drug testing on them. This shows that this filthy act is still going on.
Linked to this corruption is the cupidity of the pharmaceutical companies. According to another report these companies sell their medicines on a profit ranging from 500 per cent to 1122 per cent.
It is from here that the business of commission-eating starts which eventually puts a burden on the pocket of common people. If the multinational companies lessen their greed and stop the commission business, people would be able to get medicines at a lot more cheaper rates.
The commission-eating business does not end here. One of my doctor friends revealed that even if the doctors refuse to entertain the request from the check-up centres, they do not give up on imploring and pursue relentlessly. I said to him that the patient paid him for his treatment and hence he was not liable to take any money as a commission for the job for which he had already been paid. The commission reaches the pocket of the doctor after fleecing the patient and this phenomenon is going on all across the country. Drugs from the government-run hospitals are often sold in open markets and patients are most of the time forced to buy the medicines from outside even if the medicines remain available in hospitals.
Private hospitals are infamous for their hard hearts. The sky-rocketing fees have turned this noble profession into a business and have reduced the difference between saving a human life and earning money. One of my friends narrated an incident that happened in a private hospital in Noida. A man was brought to the hospital and after seeing his condition the doctor said that the patient needs an injection, which needs to be imported from Madras and would cost Rs. 90,000. Subtly, he said that he can make arrangements for that. The relatives of the patient asked the doctor to tell them the name of the injection so that one of them could fly to Madras and get the injection. The doctor reluctantly told the name of the injection and to everyone’s surprise the injection cost Rs 1,100. This led to a little protest in the hospital and the doctor was forced to apologise for his act.
Media often highlights the negligence of the doctors during operations and surgeries. In recent incidence of negligence, scissors and even towels were left inside the patient’s body. There are plenty of incidences where ward boys and cleaners have performed the operations. In the past one year 500 kids died in Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital. Eleven districts in Bihar have done covert surgeries on women so that they could not conceive for the rest of their lives. The recent news of loot of patients’ kidneys in the Punjab has also left the whole region in shock and rage. The theft of new-born child is now an order of the day and news related to it often finds place in newspapers. So all this perversion leads us to a conclusion that the doctors who are supposed to transform the bad health of patients into sound health themselves need transformation from their sick mentality.
While accepting degrees, doctors take a pledge to serve the humanity. If this is true, it is the need of the hour to renew this pledge all across the country with all the doctors in all the clinics, dispensaries, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. The government should also take stern actions and hold everyone accountable so that the below couplet from Hafeez Meeruthi proves redundant.
In ko to charaagaron ne maara / Itne beemar yeh beemar na the [doctors themselves have killed them, patients were not as ill as they have been made].
[Translation from Urdu by Kamran Shahid Ansari]