When we look back at the performance of the Health Ministry under any government, what comes to our mind is an abysmal picture of the health status of our country. Public health centres have been the spectacle since years with either no staff or no equipments, what to say about the lack of the state of the art technologies which symbolizes of a fantasy world for the ones residing in rural areas. When comes the situation of tackling with the health concerns the rural residents have no choice but to fork out vast sums of money for private care.
Hitherto after agrarian issues the second most common cause of debt in rural areas is the medical expenditure. The shoddy care combined with coquetries meted out to those who cannot afford anything better makes them shed even their legacies for rejuvenating their health.One out of every 11 children under five dies in India for want of low-cost, low-technology medical intervention. Maternal mortality that is unacceptably high is due to the same reason. Preventive measures which are viable against spread of communicable diseases are most of the time put to ignorance by the Health Ministry. Feasible access to proper sanitation and preventive healthcare can definitely curb the mortality rate of our country. Rather than emphasizing on major health issues our Health Ministry is constantly applying centrifugal force in carrying crusades against irrelevant issues. One of such issues is that during the birth of a child in a government hospital the parents are handed over a vaccination chart indicating the schedule of vaccinations to be given to the child at various stages of the life. One of such vaccine is against Polio. Though the Polio drops are given in general and booster doses at different stages but still the government is keenly providing these drops every year free of cost that too at the door step irrespective of the proper schedule of the vaccine but such drives are not being carried over for other costlier life saving vaccines which itself is self explanatory that how actively our Health Ministry is eradicating the other deadlier diseases which we human beings are actively prone to.
Similar to our Health Ministry the doctors appointed in the government hospitals are of the same pool. The flourishing nexus of, “gift-for-prescription” is alarmingly posing an economic as well as mental hazard for the patients. The patients who often haunt to government health centres on the assurance of being provided with the utmost treatment at cheapest prices, are driven to get the pathological tests (which can normally be got done from the same government hospitals at affordable prices) from the doctor’s recommended test laboratories and scanning centres on the pretext of non-functional test machines of the government hospital or for an advanced study. Sometimes the patients are prescribed costly medicines which are not at all essential to cure the disease but are just multivitamins and are available with the health centres to be given to the patients at free of cost. The government pays special NPA (Non - Practicing Allowance) to it’s working doctors so that, they remain loyal and sincere towards their duties, but such allowances are not able to quench the thirst of these commission agent doctors from earning more and more. Such kinds of doctors are in myriads and ubiquitous, bringing a shame to our nation’s dignity whose pedagogy of medical science in legacy is accepted world wide. The moot question remains: is our Health Ministry close to meeting our heightened expectations or are we being driven towards fool’s paradise?Healthcare should be seen as a crucial investment in human resources without which we cannot sustain the pace of national growth. Once caught red-handed the practicing license of these commission agent doctors should be cancelled for lifetime and should be asked to meet the entire expenditure of the treatment of the patients whom they have driven to economic and mental loss.
Posts
Parents' involvement in their child's education is a key factor in the child's scholastic success. It helps eliminate the...
A culture is a mirror of society in which we get the glimpse of the language, way of life, social activities, and history; namely the cultur...
I'm culpable of extraordinary naiveté, I suppose. But it's a naiveté that I really don't want to abandon, not even now or ever....
We all have a pragmatic vision to seek and see justice done. Many a times individuals take the need to chastise those who have committed cr...
With the celebrating reverberations of the 4th anniversary of the Right to Information Act being heard across the country there’s much more ...
I was ever a warrior, so, one war more. The best one and the last too. The bugle of war which the humanity inside me was procrastinating s...