One morning recently, my domestic help called me frantically to inform me about her absence for the day as they were rushing their daughter, who had suffered food poisoning, to a hospital. Asked for the name of the hospital, she mentioned an expensive private hospital in the Delhi-NCR area, where we stay. When I tried to find out if the services of that particular hospital would be affordable for her, she divulged the fact of their having borrowed Rs.10,000 at an interest rate of 10% a month from her regular moneylender, who lives near her home.
When she returned to work later, and when I inquired about the health of her daughter, she lamented saying, ek aadmi ghar ka bimaar maane cheh mahine ka udhar (one person’s illness in my house equals six months of indebtedness). Like any other service-class person who reads newspapers and stays in a gated apartment, I gave my gyaan on the public healthcare system and admonished her for her decision not to take her daughter to a government hospital instead, and for unnecessarily falling into the trap of moneylenders. Her reaction included a pertinent question, Bhabhi aap jaate ho kya... (Don’t you yourself go there....).
Yes, we don’t go there. No, the question of “why” has answers with us, but we hardly contextualise the ground realities on the grounds of being unexposed and ignorant, out of our sheer choice.
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But, on that fateful day I had been left with no choice. In October 2013, my father had suddenly collapsed at the Jamshedpur aka Tatanagar railway station. My parents had driven down to see me off as I had to go back to Delhi by the Rajdhani Express. We three (father, mother and me) had already travelled for almost five hours to Jamshedpur; my father had been posted in a remote mine-site in Odisha.
In the flick of a second of the announcement of my train’s arrival and amid my irritation at my father not having got my luggage out fast, time stood still. He fell down. Howling, my mother and I sought to gather the attention of the crowd for help.
While I was busy arranging for a wheelchair and pressuring the station master to get a doctor, my mother’s frenzied voice cut through my ear. Breathlessly, I went running to find my father lying in a pool of blood. He had passed out while being taken to the toilet on his own half-conscious yet persistent request.
Without waiting for an ambulance, I rushed him to the emergency unit of one of the hospitals of the city named after the corporate (especially known for its welfare and CSR work), which established it for the masses. Hence it runs like any government hospital, but providing services at affordable and subsidised rates. The moment we entered, I carried on with the admission procedure. Standing in a long queue, as I got fidgety, the man standing ahead of me looked back and said, Madame, baccha jal gaya hai, adhe ghante se khada hun... (my kid has severe burn injuries and I am standing here for the past half an hour).
I stood for my turn. When I asked the admission counter person if he would accept a credit card, he replied by saying kahan madameji....ee Delhi nahi hai (This is not Delhi).
Saying this very casually, he started complaining about his tea, which apparently had no sugar in it. Perturbed, I shouted back at him and asked him to immediately get a swiping machine, else I would go to an extent unimaginable.
After managing that booth somehow, I went inside, only to find my father lying as dirty as he was in a common ward with 50 other patients. My mother informed me that the doctor had come and given him some medication. Like any other white-collar employee’s family, wearing the badge of being a corporate patient, I went ahead to request the nurses to shift him to a separate room.
Yes, in our country, one is privileged as a ‘corporate patient’ if one happens to work in a public sector unit, the Central government, a multinational corporation or a big corporate house because of the obvious ‘deals’ that happen with private hospitals in the name of empanelment, given away to its employees as perks.
Upon being turned down by the nurses, desperately I went to the higher authorities with the same request, who with some arrogance stated that the PSU we were affiliated to was yet to renew the contract and hence my father couldn’t be shifted. Moreover, there was a neta (local leader) who ‘might’ arrive anytime, as he was complaining of stomach ache and a room had to be kept free. I was also told by a hospital staff member that they were arranging to buy and fix an LED TV in that room for the netaji.
Father’s treatment had started by then. When I expressed my anxiety to see and discuss my father’s case with the doctor concerned, one of his juniors told me, Bhagwaan ko dhundna padta hai (You get to see god only if you search for him). Finally, after my father’s endoscopy procedure, I spotted the doctor and spoke to him about his condition and the prognosis. Without showing an iota of empathy or sympathy and without even looking at any of the reports, he declared that my father was suspected to have stomach ulcers, and that he hoped I understood what he meant.
By the way, the reports were yet to come and the endoscopy was not done by him nor was he present at the time.
The next morning, as the doctor was on his rounds, I confronted him on how he had come to ‘suspect’ such an ulcer and asked if the reports had come. Without uttering another word, he just advised me to take my father to another city and hospital as they were still not able to control his faecal bleeding and as his blood pressure could go down anytime. Moreover, the doctor also admitted that they did not have the expertise to deal with such cases, and surgery would be the only option left if things go haywire. Since my father’s haemoglobin level was low, I was asked to arrange for two units of blood straightway. By the time the two units were administered, it was evening.
To our dismay, the doctor on his rounds in the evening commanded us to take a discharge and leave. I informed him we had booked for Kolkata by an early morning train, and it would be difficult for me and my mother to get him shifted elsewhere in this condition and at that hour. He callously told us there were lots of hotels nearby and if anything were to go wrong, he could be re-admitted. I was taken aback by his attitude.
The next morning we took father to Kolkata and he was admitted to a swanky corporate hospital. After seven days and nights, my mother and I had some sleep. And it was confirmed that he had duodenal ulcer, which is treatable.
I ask: why wouldn’t anyone rather go to such corporate hospitals instead, which give you all the luxury in the name of healthcare and you don’t even care about your hard-earned money being siphoned off, in the name of getting a life? Why wouldn’t anyone pay extra for a simple root canal for which the AIIMS in Delhi usually will have a long queue? Why would someone think even twice before borrowing any sum of money at any rate of interest if the treatment given is better and the staff are empathetic? The fact is that in India as per the 2017 National Health Profile issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the number of government hospitals is 14,379 with 6,34,879 beds. This leaves us with one bed for every 2,100 people. And the private sector still accounts for 74% of the hospitals and 40% of the hospital-beds in India, according to a study by the Indian Brand Equity Foundation. This leads to yet another cycle that says out-of-pocket health expenditure in our country accounts for nearly one-sixth of India’s poverty burden. It is needless to reiterate the composition of the rich and poor in our population.
And that’s not the end of it. Adding to the woes of the public are the privately practising doctors who manage clinics. Some of them — one I know — prescribe medicines that could be bought from their own clinic or the area where their clinic is, as the pharmaceutical company they deal with probably operates on the theory of dividing their respective zones to distribute medicines. And mind you, a few of these medicines have combinations that no other pharma company produce.
The only plausible and easy solution to this would be the government regulating the entire medical landscape including hospitals, clinics, medical science studies, pharma companies and so on. First, this will have a pressing impact on the production of the demi-gods who secure medical degrees by spending crores of rupees. And secondly, such a system of control and regulation will facilitate making the right to life a reality and not a farce.
There evidently is a nexus among many major corporate pharma companies, hospitals and doctors, that create ae vicious network of healthcare, trapping billions of Indians in it. The network, which everybody is a part of, tends to ignore and remain like an open secret. We have failed to ensure that the right to healthcare could probably become the anchor for the yet latent but very fundamental right to life; because, the right to life should be the moral principle based on the belief that a human being has the right to live. It should rank above any other fundamental right.
In an era where despite the right to education and the right to information, the right to life is so fundamentally elusive in this country, this would at least ensure that a poor person dies naturally of disease, not due to laxity on the part of the medical system or torture by moneylenders. The rich might has ample money, but the facilities extended by a doctor or a hospital would be essentially the same as for a poor person; a patient might be a Minister’s son but that wouldn’t guarantee him a special air-conditioned room with special privileges.
The network needs to be disturbed and interrupted and the vicious circle of healthcare needs to be regulated to create a virtuous circle of life. That, essentially, will be the real Right to Life.
sumanakhan1402@gmail.com
