I am still finding it hard to reconcile with the fact that seriously sick people were virtually thrown to the throes of death at the very place where they had gone to revive their lives. Medical negligence is not uncommon in India and often people are forced to take it as part of life, yet what happened at the Advanced Medical Research Institute (AMRI) in South Kolkata is very difficult to live with.
About ten years ago, during a visit to Kolkata, I had to see a well known ENT specialist as I was suffering from serious sinusitis symptoms. I do not want to name the doctor, who was embroiled in a much publicised case of medical negligence, as he is no more. He suggested some tests, including an MRI scan, and kept insisting that I get them done from the now infamous AMRI hospital.
I was too ignorant then to understand the so called doctor-corporate nexus. However, the enlightenment came soon on my first visit to the AMRI on a December morning. Right from the reception desk I was swamped by a team of salesmen, who wanted to sell all sorts of policies and services. As I tried to avoid them saying that I lived abroad, they got even more interested in me, capitalising on emotional issues, like what would happen to my ageing parents when I was away to the difficulties of an outsider in finding a reliable doctor for proper treatment.Finally, I had to tell them, quite rudely, that I lived in Kolkata for three decades and the city where I belong to is no alien to me.
Recently, one of my relatives was diagnosed with cancer and had to be admitted to the AMRI. Those who get their patients admitted to hospitals like the AMRI know fully well the financial burden they have to undertake, but what you get as a bonus is the inhuman behaviour meted out both by the staff and the doctors. The attending staff had no clue when my relative passed away in the early hours of a day in mid October and didn't even have the courtesy of informing my sister in law, who was waiting downstairs. Moreover, they charged Rs 1200 just for releasing the body.
Mine are no exception. The out pour of public anger over the past couple of days in media outlets, social networking sites and even in interpersonal conversations are testimony to the fact that many others have had similar experiences in some of the private hospitals in Kolkata and elsewhere. Despite such anguish we were unable to do anything that would put a check on the heartless actions of the wily traders of the health business.
My friend Parthapratim Mandal has raised a very pertinent question. Partha asks, when so many private hospitals have come up in Kolkata over the past few years, why not a single government hospital was built. Not that we get any better service at government hospitals, but it seems that the entire health business is leased out to the private sector.
Whenever there is any incident like the one that took place at AMRI recently, we start talking idealism. The media tend to capture the moment, overlooking the systemic problems. And there are people who find morbid pleasure in getting embroiled in blame game along party lines. After a while, as the dust settles down we tend to leave the personal tragedies with those who suffered and life moves one.
People forget to ask some of the vital questions like: why the poor and middle class people are forced to go to private hospitals like the AMRI even at the cost of selling their assets, why the salesmanship dominates over compassion in the health sector and why the doctors prescribe the same tests over and over again as patients move from one medical unit to another. These are only a few that comes to my mind now. There must be plenty more unanswered questions to deal with.
All comments are personal and have no bearing on others.
In last few months I had to deal with Hospitals in Bangalore. While cost and commercialstation are in same line, the behavior of care givers - especially nurses and doctors are in line with world standard. They do have third short comings in term of language, capability, idiotic hospital procedures etc - but heart is in right place and try to help you with sincere care.
ReplyDeleteWhen digger far I figured that all come from small villages and rows outside of Bangalore and probably paid a fraction of what nurses in kolkata got paid.
Coming to govt hospital - AMRI was built in PPP model with govt, private participation. However it's failure shows how a good concept can be abused in the absence of enforcement of rules.
AMRI was built on PPP model. But in recent years the govt share came down to less than 2% and it is one of the costliest hospitals among the private health care units in Kolkata, let alone the question of so-called hidden costs.
ReplyDeleteI am still very much shattered due to this AMRI incident. I just can't withstand today's ruthless nexus between few doctors and business people. Their main aim is to earn huge sum of money in the name of care giving.
ReplyDeleteMy mind goes back to the days.... during my child hood..... in the sixties and seventies... my father was also a doctor..... a chest specialist... attached with (then) K S Roy TB Hospital at jadavpur..... We used to live in the campus of that hospital..... so clean and beautiful it was.... I saw through my father and his dedicated band of colleagues.... What they meant by discipline... what they meant by care...... What they meant by compassion....
Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy insisted my father to join that hospital instead of going abroad for more greener pasture......My father used to get Rs 150 as salary.... For them this was a divine profession.... people used to respect them like god.... Doctors those days were so simple... and easily approachable.... so down to earth...
Now a days we see very few doctors like them....
Now a days we do RESPECT the doctors!!!!!.... many out of fear... we respect their social status.... their cars.... the posh hospitals with which they are attached... the unnecessary regime of multiple tests they prescribe for us for their own benefit.... so on....
Once my father cured a small time farmer from sunderbans suffering from TB.... He was financially not in a position to pay the consultancy fee (That also Rs 5) of my father... Every time he used to come for treatment he used to lament for not able to pay my father's consultancy fee... I never saw any grudge in my father's eyes.... a few months after he was cured, one day, he came to our house and presented my father some pumpkins and gourd that he had cultivated....my father accepted it. I will never forget the glint and the satisfaction in that farmer's eye when my father accepted his small gift.... Later i asked my father why he being such a respected doctor accepted such a gift from that man... My father looked at my eyes and answered.... to give him back his respect and to release him from his inner burden of not able pay me when I treated him. Those days were so simple... so uncomplicated... Hospitals were so clean.... staffs were so dutiful.... People were so easy.... where are those days gone...... Where? Those days are gone for ever..