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A tiny room in a village. The worn out walls are lined with racks, half filled with dusty,
grimy bottles. An old man is sleeping on the floor, curled up beside a broken table. Now
he is shaken out of his siesta by a group of four people. The 70-year old Jishnu Singh and
his twenty year old daughter-in-law, Shanta bai. They are carrying a bawling toddler and
an infant who looks too weary even to open her eyes. "Has the new doctor saab arrived
yet?" asks Jishnu. "Nah…may be after a week, or a month," replies the
old man. "Ohhh! Is the nurse madam around then?," says the desperate Jishnu. No.
She has gone to the town….will be back after a couple of days. Can the old man please
help them? Jishnu’s two-year old grand son has high fever and a racking cough; and
the baby is suffering from diarrhoea. Sorry, no luck! The public health clinic —
the only one in the village — has run out of its stock of medicines… even cough
syrups, and the cheap oral rehydration salts!! Jishnu has no options now. He will have to
go to the village quack. |
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Scene 2
A lush green campus in the outskirts of a city. A helicopter has just landed there,
carrying Omar Ali—a resident of Malaysia—and his wife. As he steps out of the
craft he looks around with pleasure—at the gymnasium, the yoga centre and the
picturesque pebble walk. No, he has not come to a luxury spa, but to a private hospital to
undergo heart surgery. He is met by a team of medics and nurses, and taken to his
room—a large airy space, fitted with swish electronic gadgets. Of course, the
hospital offers the best and the most technically advanced health equipment available in
Asia and employs world-class medical practitioners.Ali nods in approval…he has
made the right choice. Even if he is paying a fortune for it! |
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Health
Do we take care?
Yup…you have guessed correctly. Both these scenes are being staged in our
very own India. Our land of contrasts and contradictions!!
Sickly score
Here—mull over this.
More and more foreign nationals are flocking to India for surgeries, liver transplants,
dental and even cosmetic care. Why? Because our health services combine latest medical
technologies with qualified professionals. Last year as many as 150,000 foreigners visited
India for medical treatment. And this figure is likely to climb by 15 per cent each year.
Experts predict that by 2012 India could earn more than 100 billion rupees through such
‘medical tourism’.
Hmm….should we then swell with pride? Wait a while! I have more figures for you.
India has 16.7 per cent of the world’s population, but it bears a frightening 19.5
per cent of the ‘global burden of diseases’. Now what does that mean? Global
burden of diseases is an indicator used by experts to gauge the number of people dying
prematurely due to a particular disease as well as the number of years spent by them in a
state of ‘disability’ because of this. In other words, it is a kind of a tool to
measure how healthy a nation really is…and where does it
rank—health-wise—in the global arena.
And India’s report card is hardly something to be proud of. Let me throw some more
‘sickly’ figures at you. More than half of this disease burden that we shoulder
is accounted for by communicable diseases, such as diarrhoea, malaria and tuberculosis.
About one third is contributed by non-communicable ailments like cancer, heart failure
etc. Around 17 per cent deaths and disabilities are due to injuries. And lack of proper
emergency care support. There is more. Every year around five lakh children die of
water-borne diseases in our country.
So you see…India, despite its high profile health
services, is a den of all possible maladies that can affect an ordinary human being!!
Healthy..are we?
Its not all been downhill, of course. The overall health status of the country has
certainly improved through the years. Life expectancy has gone up, infant mortality rate
has reduced. Small pox has been eradicated and the goal to eradicate leprosy by 2005 looks
achievable. But these statistics seem fine only when you look at them in isolation.
Compare these with the rest of the world and they pale into insignificance.
You then realise that our country continues to account for 23 per cent of total child
deaths, 20 per cent of maternal deaths, 30 per cent of tuberculosis cases and 68 per cent
of leprosy cases in the world.
In fact, health-wise we are way down the ladder—jostling at the bottom with some
of the most underdeveloped countries of the world!
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