Where to go, Sir? – I
The sordid reality is that the state has over the decades failed its citizens, dead or alive or ailing
Rattan Singh Gill
Jammu Tawi, Mazy 20: With Covid’s Nadirshahi invasion and Medical OPDs shut in the hospitals, people are forced to take refuge within their shelters to protect themselves from Corona’s bloody claw.
The available situation is just like an invader searching for its victim for a kill who hides within some cleavage to save his life and then sudden reflexes of cough or sneeze come that would get him caught and killed. Caught between the Devil and the Deep Sea situation, the ailing patients if confined to home sure to lose life or limb and if goes out to the hunting ground of money-minded Docs, it would burn a big hole in the pocket.
In ‘Sare Jahan se Accha Hindustan Hamara, Sardi Jukaam Khanshi koumi Nishan Hamara’ regular health issues like Cough, Cold, upset Tummy, Headache, Body-ache and serious ailments like Kidney, Heart, Liver, Dialysis and other female reproductive organ issues have been normally most common. It is not like Covid has uprooted all of this human-body-baggage from their permanent residency and established its stay by an illegal occupation.
The prolonged visible symptoms never caught our imagination here in J&K as well as at the Centre that all was not well with the Nation’s health care set-up. In fact, if the expert diagnosis is to be relied on, public health should be in ICU and if at all attended, maybe by novices.
This threw open a great business opportunity for the Private Medical Practitioner, Laboratories, Diagnostic Clinics and of course their Don-Pharma and Medical industry.
In the absence of the credible alternative consultation process and inadequate philanthropic initiatives, if available somewhere, the deprived citizens run pillar to post carrying Article 21, a guarantee by State with the obligation of preserving life.
Keeping this piece of paper in our pocket, we all know well that this is merely an unrealizable Hundi issued by the bankrupt system. The sordid reality is that the State has over the decades failed its citizens – dead, alive or ailing.
While the government failed to create ample job opportunities, a common grudge, credit goes to these Private Medical Practitioners, of course with few exceptions to be counted on fingers, who kept the nexus of Labs, Pharma and diagnostic clinics kicking with brisk business.
The soul of a large number of medical practitioners have lost the moral fabric and they keep on prescribing unnecessary, unreasonable and expensive medicines, Lab and diagnostic tests in a well organized unholy tie-ups flowing decent commissions and considerations to them.
A pertinent question is as to where the common citizen having some health problem, other than Covid, should go in search of these Demigods – the practicing doctors who have sold their conscience in becoming so commercial, rude and arrogant as they resort to misbehavior with the patients and their attendant even on a small query. For them the patient and his attendant have no right to ask for any clarification despite paying enough fee and even if a life is at stake.
Agreed, it is an extraordinary situation and the Administration is over-occupied with its fight against Corona, but Government is not an ordinary identity and cannot absolve its responsibility to check this deadly trade and throw the frail and fragile citizens to the feast of vultures. (To be continued…)
