Private Medical Colleges: A Fatal Epidemic
Let us start with three case studies.
First, the latest.(June 5,2013) My sister , a 70 year old retired teacher of normal health, fell ill with fever and was taken to a hospital run by catholic nuns.Once she has been diagnosed with dengue fever she was told to go to another hospital to get blood transfusion (platelets) .Thus she ended up in another catholic hospital. Eight days later she was dead!
Case two : (May 30,2013) When my sister fell ill her third daughter , a 40 year old teacher and mother of three young children aged between 15 and 3, stayed with her in the hospital. After a couple of days she felt unwell and got her blood tested in a private clinical laboratory which informed her over the phone that the test was negative for dengue fever.Yet on the day my sister was transferred to the second hospital the daughter fell very ill and was admitted to another private hospital, close to the one where her mother was admitted 6 hours earlier.Nobody in the hospital cared to do a thorough check up or send her blood for test, taking for granted the objectivity of the verbal communication of the patient about the laboratory results . By midday the next day , ie,16 hours later, her three children had lost their mother!!
Case three: Around six (?) years ago my cousin brother aged 45, owner of a fertilizer production unit got a cut on his foot which he duly got dressed in a local private hospital .As he was not advised not to work in the fertilizer unit , he continued with his daily routine in the unit.Soon the wound spread over and he was taken to a bigger hospital (the hospital where my sister died) where his condition worsened and, was then transf- erred to a more sophisticated hospital where he died a couple of days later.
Are these just isolated cases of wrong diagnosis or mere human errors or, are they symptoms of something deeper ?
Is it justifiable to accuse the doctors of incompetence?
Or, are the Hospitals and Clinical Laboratories responsible for the wrong/delayed diagnosis?
It would be unfair to point the finger at any one person or establishment. It is the cumulative effect of various factors ie, Private ( Self Financing) Medical Colleges, Private Hospitals and Private Medical Laboratories.
1.Private Medical Colleges.
Although all the medical colleges have been recognized by the Medical Council of India as Colleges imparting standardized medical education, 'the standard' is hardly kept in them.It is not because they lack quality in their laboratories or classrooms or teaching staff but because the students they admit lack the standard of intellectual integrity required for medical profession. (It is an open secret how it happens and so doesn't deserve special mention here.) A student getting a mere 40% of marks in qualifying exam wouldn't make a worthy doctor even if he attended Oxford University Medical School. Superior intellectual capacity is the basic ingredient in making a good doctor.Rotten meat cooked in a five star hotel kitchen would still upset stomach.
Year after year, the private education sector churns out thousands of substandard doctors to cater to the patients of India. Labor market is awash with 'spurious' doctors as medical stores with spurious medicines.
2.Private Hospitals.
The private hospitals are not charitable institutions, they are businesses.(Even hospitals with names such as Charity (Latin: Caritas) are not charities) .They can make money only if they can successfully treat their patients. No private hospitals would like to see their patients die.Besides, to keep themselves market leaders they usually install the latest state of the art machinery and facilities to impress the patients. But more than machines and facilities , good doctors and good support staff are the key to successful treatment of patients.
Having spent millions on the hospitals the entrepreneurs can't be asked to go abroad in search of doctors. Thus they end up recruiting locally available sub- standard half baked doctors trained in the self financing medical colleges to work in their super specialty hospitals.
However,the private hospitals do know that their doctors are sub standard. But it is a blessing in disguise for them; less pay , more profit.( It has been reported that newly (un)qualified doctors pay hospitals to work as house surgeons!!!) To cover up the prevalence of sub standard doctors the private hospitals have a very cunning trick up their sleeves: appoint just one highly qualified and famous doctor. Having a doctor in just one single discipline ( eg; gynecology, surgery, cardiology, etc) is no guarantee for the welfare of even the patients of the specialist's discipline, because the junior doctors feeding the specialist with the medical condition of the patients are sub standard. So in effect, the specialists too become ineffective.
3.Private Medical Laboratories
Medical Laboratories are on the same footing as the Private Hospitals; a business which depends on local labor market to recruit technicians. Although some laboratories have got the state of the art equipment and machines the personnel manning them are not qualified to handle them. Thus the test results given by them become either undependable or even outright wrong as it was in the case of my niece who died. It was recently reported that when an under cover investigative journalist handed over blood samples of a dog and a hen , the laboratory gave out results as if they were of humans! A laboratory that could not distinguish between human and animal bloods can hardly be called a laboratory.Yet, almost 100% of out-patients depend on such laboratories.
So, who is responsible for the deaths of my sister and her daughter and earlier, of my cousin?
The doctors were not negligent. They had done all what they could. But they could do only what they grasped while studying. And, they could grasp only what their intellects could fathom .Tragically, most of the students admitted to private medical colleges are not intellectually fit to undergo medical training.
In the same way the Private Laboratories cannot be blamed as they have not broken any rules by appointing only trained technicians as per the norms put down by the controlling bodies.
If I were a believer in god I could have said that it was the will of god that my sister and her daughter die and her three little children lose their mother and grandmother at a go.
But I am convinced that those deaths were not caused by divine will, but by human will; it was by the will of the people who run the so called Self Financing Medical Colleges for various reasons other than common good : it was by the will of those who run Laboratory Technicians Courses for monetary gain rather than common good .
In short, sub standard doctors and sub standard lab technicians are the major causes of deaths in Private Hospitals, rather than epidemics like dengue fever.
Epidemics caused by viruses can be stopped or prevented; but the flow of sub standard doctors and hospital staff appears to be out of control .The only way to control it is to put a complete halt to Private Medical Colleges .
Private Medical Colleges are the real epidemic of modern India, with a huge potential to kill people in millions .
