Fit India is an impossible dream when the real burden of disease is systemic negligence, no matter who runs the Govt
Even the death of 100 infants in a month at Kota’s JK Lon Hospital due to sheer negligence hasn’t shocked us as a nurturer and bequeather of our future generation. We would rather confine ourselves to silly debates on religion and identity when there is a mindless loss of young lives and a lost generation that may not be healthy enough to shape their identity in the first place. We can be termite-free, zero this and that but not disease-free. Isn’t a nation that is aspiring to be a $5 trillion economy on bullet trains ashamed that its newborns cannot even survive a harsh winter simply because they are underweight and underdeveloped? All political slugfests and demagoguery have no meaning in this country when year after year the poor and underprivileged children die because of a compromised public healthcare system, no matter who is running the regime with a difference or who is running it on an ad hoc basis. Government hospitals in this country are but death traps for children, not the hope to revive and grow them. In fact, it is grossly insensitive of the authorities to not provide the basics of neo-natal care in the Kota facility — there were not enough incubators, no hygiene standards with pigs moving around as carriers of germs, no oxygen supplies and infrastructural breakdowns of critical care — but hire a red carpet for a visit by the Rajasthan Health Minister to investigate gaps in the system. They restored the piped oxygen supply system in the neo-natal unit overnight, which had so far been relying on cylinders, just because of a public outcry. In other words, we will get our basic rights only when we scream. Otherwise, we settle blissfully into ignorance as we are gradually being tamed by a system into being complacent and not question the status quo. How else can one explain why the Kota incident is an exact mirror image of the one at a Government hospital in Gorakhpur in 2017? There, too, medical negligence arising from the shortage of oxygen supply was discovered to have been a major cause for avoidable deaths of infants. The oxygen supply was cut by the supplier due to non-payment of dues. The State Government had ignored repeated requests for clearing them despite warnings about supply being cut. One year after the incident, the families of the victims had not been compensated or visited by State Government officials. Both the JK Lon and the BRD Medical College hospitals in Kota and Gorakhpur are supposedly among the biggest Government facilities in their States and claim to be a specialised facility to treat pediatric complications. Both are the only hope for villagers from the districts.
The politics over the child deaths has been pitiful, reprehensible and infuriating. The Congress Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot seemed a clone of the BJP as he engaged in competitive whataboutery, claiming 954 children died at the hospital this year as compared to 1,005 in 2018 and 1,198 in 2014 when the BJP was in power. “Every day some deaths occur in every hospital in the country. There is nothing new in this,” he said, legitimising institutional apathy and making helplessness habitual than punishable. Is that what he means by his pledge of Nirogi Rajasthan, a log book of fewer child deaths? Remember, before the uproar, the State Government had appointed an inquiry committee, which had cleared the hospital of any wrong-doing and identified the child deaths as caused by cold. Predictably, the BJP brigade, led by the Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, claimed the number of deaths was definitely higher this time compared to the last few years and patronisingly extended help in identifying gaps in healthcare delivery. What needs to be understood is that such cases are not always about the lack of infrastructure or funds but the lack of will to optimise their use and functions, an institutionalised fund leakage and a behaviour that believes in short-changing the poor and uneducated. Simply because they cannot afford private medical care despite schemes like Ayushman Bharat with corporate facilities putting many riders to availing it. The Government hospital then becomes the only hope for the sick and infirm in the heart of India. Then there is the bigger structural mapping. Our public expenditure on health as a percentage of the GDP is far lower than countries classified as the “poorest” in the world, a fact conceded by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. In the National Health Profile 2019, the Government admitted that in 2016, its public spending on health was just 1.17 per cent of the GDP. In comparison, nations classified as Lower Income Countries by the World Bank spent 1.57 per cent of their GDP on health that year. Fit India is an impossible dream when the real burden of disease is negligence.