Free healthcare: A step towards healthy India

A woman receives treatment for high fever, one of the main symptoms of viruses caused by mosquitoes, at a government hospital in Gurgaon, on the outskirts of New Delhi. (Photo: AFP)

Abdul Jaleel Faridi, a Socialist Party Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council member went on a political delegation to China in late 1970s. After the political hustings he took to the medical health system in China. He found doctors with allocated specific areas where they saw patients who were given medicines free of charge while doctors were given their salaries by the government. The Chinese doctors sought to know the Indian condition, to which Dr Faridi replied that we take “fee” from the patients and they buy medicines from the market. The Chinese were aghast as a person, already under “duress and dying” is also made to pay a “fee”. They expressed that people in India should change this system. But, how can our system change With apologies and regret I tend to put into order that such a capitalist system can only survive in our country where varna system has been the way of life for quite a few millenniums. A person who suffers is ordained to suffer, and suffers for good, for the ills to have been committed in earlier birth and which would help in atonement. Hence, to make a profit out of “suffering” is also destined. When such a logic is honed in our conscious or unconscious mind, the very idea of providing medicinal health is floundered.

For a modern welfare state it is no time to be further wasted to overhaul our health system for the extreme good of the country. There are thousands of stories where “selling of property, land and entire belongings” for medical treatment are abound in every village of our country. Thus, a common citizen of India, the foremost dread would be to fall ill or anyone in his or her family to be in the same position. How would India respond to this ghastly and eventual scenario in the coming years, when a great chunk of this more than a billion people would move for their last stage in life Wouldn’t we be confronted with the stark reality of carrying our “ills” in our hands and with no medical help available within our grasp The days ahead are ominous. The problem is that whoever has been born will have to die and also thus out of illness. Hence, you and I and all will have to follow suit, but what is the preparation for it There are millions in our country, from lower middle class strata, who do not even have enough money to “pay for conveyance” to reach to hospitals. What to talk of economically backward and poor classes, even fruits sold outside hospitals are always expensive! There ought to be a million new hospitals all across the country, and we ought to devote the largest chunk of our budget towards health sector. These flyovers won’t win us lives. Hardly, I find government advertisements for opening a hospital unlike flyovers and four-lane-roads. We don’t need shopping malls at this spree but instead hospitals on a rapid pace.

We have enough money to make robust India but that would remain a dream unfulfilled until the crying and toiling voice of millions is answered. There is a stupendous rise in the number of diabetic cases in India, people eating masala, despite court’s ban is not stopping, contaminated food and vegetables is adding to the number of cancer patients, kidney, liver and lung failures are getting common, dialysis is out of reach for millions, pregnant women are anaemic, millions are getting into the “old age” mould and thus scurrying for health cover where there is none! There is a mushrooming spurt of private nursing homes, hospitals and trauma centres. Same doctors hopping in between private hospitals, often being used as “brand ambassadors”, thus just signalling the grim paucity of less number of doctors we have. Whereas, people, for that matter, being just forced to head for them as their only fait accompli. The situation becomes all the more uniquely piquant as doctors are reached always in “case of emergency” and this can occur with a billionaire as well as to a pauper. Hence, doctors are the jugular vein of the nation, unlike any other profession in the country. To just put into information: there is only one doctor per 11,528 patients in government hospitals and we have only 9.4 lakhs doctors for over 1.2 billion people. Our apathy can also well be understood as we spend around one per cent of our GDP on health sector!

Roti, kapda aur makaan is now a slogan of the past as dawa is the most potent need for all, which ironically has to start on the very onset of birth and goes on until the last breath. It is the only succour which makes the life get going. One can survive in a hut, put on the same shirt for days and draw a rickshaw for a living, but what about his or her illness and how to maintain his or her wellness Some revolutionary steps are warranted from the state in earnest. Every company, indigenous or multinational, industry or private should compulsorily be made to make a hospital or a medical college, according to its turnover or its licence would be cancelled. Medical know how should be included as a compulsory subject right from Class VIII so as to inculcate a medical sense into our coming generations. Even art graduates should be made to have a brush with medical sphere of studies and every girl student, in whatever stream of studies should be made to undergo a “nurse course” curriculum. Black money holders may be given full waiver for the only criteria of opening a medical hospital, college or a university.

Films and TV serials to highlight doctor’s role, instead of their prevalent perfidy (sic), in our society should be encouraged. No doctor who studied in India, in a private or a government college should be allowed to move out of India, those practising abroad should be asked to come back or their citizenship would be annulled, no doctor should be allowed private practice and they be made government employees and every medicine/operation should be free, retiring doctors to be given government OPDs and should be on government payrolls until they call-off. General OPDs, medical hospitals and colleges to be opened on a war-footing and not on the outskirts but in between populations, old buildings should be refurbished into new hospitals, there ought to be a 100 bed hospital, equipped with best operation theatre for every 10,000 people. There should be no privatisation in the medical field and everything should be nationalised. Remember how our nationalised banks saved us from worldwide economic recession a few years back.

“Right to health” should be the prerogative of every citizen and a welfare state has to see it all. This is neither daydreaming nor a utopia but something of utmost importance or else we will continue to fend for our fate in our varna system. There ought to be a cashless medical help and health system for every citizen in India. Until then our welfare state slogan will just remain a mirage, notwithstanding us being a nuclear state.

Let million hospitals bloom and let every Indian glow in his or her health. Healthy India. Great India.

The writer is Uttar Pradesh state information commissioner