Healthcare is a right for every Indian. Indian had the highest allocation of Rs.69000 crores in the 2019-20 budget. With a 130 crores population, it works out to Rs.530 per head or Rs. 1.45 per person per day. No wonder, we have more quacks and fake doctors abounding rural India, taking the gullible villagers for a ride. Thankfully, the villagers get less sick than the townsfolks, prone to pollution and stressful living styles.
Covid19 is the first pandemic that is impacting India and revealing the hopeless inadequacies in its health infrastructure. It includes woefully inadequate beds, healthcare professionals and equipment.
Even without the Covid, the government-run hospitals are a scare, with poor hygiene, many patients sharing a single bed and untrained persons attending to severe cases.
We come across news of sweepers or other menial staff even stitching up post-operative cases, rates nibbling away children and dogs carrying newborns.
Successive governments merely criticize the previous ones for failing to rise to the needs of our countrymen, and the earlier governments dodging the attacks claiming mitigating hunger as the then priority. Thus, we have covered 73 years after our attaining independence and might cross a few more decades to enjoy equal healthcare for all Indians.
The entry of private insurance into health sector has queered the pitch further. I have seen the hospitals squeezing every paise of the insurance limits of the patients admitted on one pretext or other. I have witnessed consulting doctors in private hospitals and nursing homes pressurized for generating revenue. The nexus between the pathology labs and the doctors are no secret either.
Medical is no more a noble profession, but a horrendous linkage between pharma companies, nursing homes and labs, where the patients become voiceless guinea pigs. The noble doctors, a few close friends of mine included, find themselves outcast or fighting a losing battle against systemic attacks and end up as recluses and depressed.
Covid has once again exposed the fangs of the healthcare criminals, who are refusing patients or demanding unthinkable sums as an advance for providing a bed. There are cases where critical patients are denied admission in many hospitals, and the patients breathing their last.
With upwards of Rs.5 lacs as the minimum upfront, non-returnable sum to be paid at the admission, where is India heading? Covid is not akin to cancer, acquired by smoking or drinking but is thrust on some hapless ones, cursed I can say. How could they have many lacs to pay up for treatment?
The problem lies elsewhere. The population of 370 million at the time of independence, adding 350% has to be curbed. We can’t just produce like rabbits and seek the best of healthcare and facilities. No government has the guts to ask people to control the size of their families for the benefits of votes. More than two children are now discouraged by very few states and with the limited threat of denial of jobs in the government. The disincentives have to be better than that, as we should incentivize smaller families.
It’s now or never!
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
