"Mr. Jain could have been saved had be been in Apollo Hospital". That was what I was told by a Hindu Rao doctor, who was on duty while death embraced 50-year old B. S Jain on June 2, 1997 by the callousness of the government hospital. He died after a neglected four-and-half hours during which the hospital employees could not complete the paper work and shift him to the ICU for artificial ventilation and thus save him.
Jain’s death, which sinks into a government hospital’s existence, came to light when his wife complained to the Lieutenant-Governor who ordered a magisterial inquiry into it. The inquiry, completed in August, came down heavily on the hospital authorities, for the complete breakdown of communication in the hospital and the callousness of the staff. The report in fact seemed to agree with the Hindu Rao doctor’s opinion that Mr. Jain could have been alive had be been in Apollo. But, then, Apollo was beyond his dreams.
Jain is no exception, like him millions across the city are devoid of the dream of the plush surroundings of Apollo, its bright doctors, caring nurses. For the majority the only refuge are the government hospitals which resemble slaughter houses of epidemics and deadly microbes; on the verge of crumbling down on the patients with its heavy load of bureaucratic laziness.
But the city, no doubt, is witnessing fabulous developments in the medical field. Corporate houses are starting hospitals with facilities unheard before, in buildings resembling upmarket hotels.
However, behind the veil of the flourishing private hospitals business is the open loot of the public exchequer and resources in the name of providing quality medical facility to those on the margins. This coupled with the lacking will of the system and political patronage offered to uncough and abusive practitioners is slowly resulting in the metamorphosis of the medical field into a many-faced monster before the majority. The public hospitals are lost deep in callousness, quality private treatment is not accessible and affordable and private medical consultancy could prove too dangerous.
The Monsoon Session of the Delhi Assembly saw the ruling party members stalling a Bill to ban quackery in the Capital. The BJP legislators claimed that we need to first provide medical facilities to the entire population, then only go for banning quackery. But it is reliably learnt that even the top brass of the party was under pressure from vested interests not to introduce the Bill under which even Registered Medical Practitioners are considered quacks. The same political patronage is behind the boundless growth of the five star hospitals in the Capital at the cost of the public exchequer.
When the America-returned doctor, Dr. Pratap Reddy wanted to extend his business empire into the cow-belt, under his banner Apollo, the Delhi Government was more than ready to be a partner for ‘providing the best possible medical facility to the common man’. Today, the best possible facility is there but not for the common man. The land for the hospital was transferred by the Delhi Development Authority, the land owning agency in the Capital, to the Delhi Government under government-to-government transfer and Dr Rao built up his hospital on the land provided almost free of cost. For the facility provided by the government the Delhi poor was promised a large number of beds in the hospital and a substantial chunk of the out-patient consultancy. But, the promise remains on paper.
After repeated attempts, the Health Minister, Dr. Harsh Vardhan, once promised a group of journalists that he would publish a list of all hospitals which are supposed to do charitable work. The growing fashion of five star facilities on government land, is robing the government off its valuable land in the City, besides holding a population to ransom by the business moguls to expand their business interests. The phenomenon is dangerous, so is the attitude of the Government.
Charity is a documentary promise for facilities provided only to the rich and the mighty.
The privatisation is not just bringing in the five star facilities with it, but also pushing the ordinary population to doom.
It was a year back during a casual discussion that a senior gynecologist of St Stephen’s hospital said her department gets on an average one to two cases of Post-MTP complications daily. Subsequently inquiries led me to the darker sides of Capital’s private medical world. At East of Kailash a bucket of boiling water was the only visible equipment in an abortion clinic who were ready to abort even a nine-month-old pregnancy. A daylight murder! Plunging the live baby into the boiling water is routine for them. The abortion clinics are mushrooming, and private practitioners are having a field day. With the private clinics, there seem no absolute control on them. The anti-quackery cell set up by the Delhi Government is yet to act tough on the hundreds of unlicensed practitioners.
The growing disparities, mostly in financial terms, between the government hospitals and the private ones are growing in alarming terms. The flying costs of treatments are also isolating out the top bracket of the society into the cozy comforts of the five star hospital flourishing at the hands of industrial houses. But the last Indian is either walking into the serpentine queues of a government hospital or to the dark room of a quack.

Josy Joseph
a well-known Journalist of Delhi.

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