DailyPost 2913
MEDICAL / HEALTHCARE MAFIA
The Hippocratic Oath which every medical practitioner dutifully takes, is an oath of ethics historically taken. The message and practice behind this oath takes the medical profession to hallowed levels, way different from any other profession. The capability to cure is a superhuman skill and thus was to be performed with an ethics of a different kind. The healthcare ecosystem with all the critical stakeholders were to work in synergy to deliver good health to mankind in the best possible manner. Slowly we found worldly evils creeping in and it seemed that it was taking over.
The sermons of medical ethics were not making any headway in the hearts and minds of the stakeholders. It is not time to get into the details of it but suffice to say, that the pharmaceutical industry and its sales mechanism, the medical equipment manufacturers’ sales positioning, the doctors’ relationship with these, the medical insurance industry and corporatization of hospitals have done sufficient damage to the medical profession. The trust, faith and credibility was lost forever. For a patient doubt / suspicion and doctors do not go hand in hand. The medical facilities improved would be the popular feeling but at what cost, good or bad, as a natural process or otherwise, will be debated on some other day.
On the governmental healthcare side, the situation was blatantly unhealthy from any point of view. The RG Kar case has brought it out in the open. That the persons who were legally mandated to run the medical college as well as the hospital in the pink of health, were the ones involved in the dastardly act of decimating it. The result is for all of us to see. That it was created and supported to the hilt by the powers that be, might take time to conclusively be proved in the court of law, but the ones who have faced music of the medical czars don’t need any judgement for validation. It has been going on for decades together.
Power, influence and dictatorial control, to an extent that the life of the resident doctors and of many more, were mortgaged in this institution. The irregularities saga is already in the public and criminal investigation domain. That money was the grease to run this machine is to state the obvious. All that is unimaginable, to happen in a medical college and hospital, was a part of the normal routine at RG Kar. Mafia operations were normalised. The job of the fence was to eat the crop. If a postmortem of one of their own can be done in such a cavalier manner, speaks volumes about the state of affairs. The allegations of the hospital administration making rounds can put any horror movie to shame. The resident doctors were left with no choice but to come out in the open. They are mincing no words. The government is still fighting its battle so that the damage is brought down to the minimum. This is not RG Kar’s case, it is India’s, one in a lifetime chance to get freed from medical / healthcare mafiadom. They are watching to get back to full swing wheeling dealing once again.
WHAT HAVE WE MADE OF THE HEALTHCARE INSTITUTIONS WHICH CATER TO THE MAXIMUM VOTERS, WHO BRING THESE RULING DISPENSATIONS TO POWER.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.