Clinical laboratories need hematologists, pathologists and microbiologists to run tests but these medical specialists are not easily available to private laboratories. So they engage government specialists to work in spare time and on off-duty days. There again it is patients who get services of the best, which saves their lives. It is because government hospitals do not have facilities to test all patients or conduct all tests that patients go to these private laboratories. They are proof of authorities’ negligence and dereliction in setting up well-equipped laboratories attached to hospitals from the village level up to the metros. If government labs were equipped and staffed well, government specialists would have done these tests in government hospitals. Without equipping government labs, dictating specialists not to attend spare time duties in private clinics, is denying best services to patients; it is politician’s jealousy for professionalism. Let professionals work wherever they are needed, which would alleviate pains and solve health problems more effectively. We expect specialists to be allowed to practice privately and freely as there are not enough numbers of them compared to general practitioners, but here what we see is, in general medicine a doctor can practice but in specialties like much needed pathology, microbiology and hematology one is not allowed to. There is some kind of fishiness in government decisions in this matter. They decide which specialties are to be included in the ban or excluded from calculating on from which the great private hospitals expect and need a great influx of patients. Is it time politicians in government are seized and subjected to forced psychiatric treatment, before more delusional and hallucinatory decisions are taken and health services ruined beyond repairs? Sometimes, a skilled anesthetist will have to be called by a private hospital to attend to an operation on a patient there. Anesthetists are an essential part of an operating team who can make it a success or failure. A skilled anesthetist is a much sought-after thing. If an anesthetist is free and an operating team in a private hospital is in need of one for saving the life of a patient, what wrong is there in spending his spare time to save the life of another human being? But this jealous politician of ours is against such loftiness and has decided to include anesthesia in the list of banned specialties; we know he was a lesser-learned craft teacher in a primary school in his former life before coming into politics and becoming a health minister. If he is questioned, his young followers will rush into the hospital and seize doctors by their collars as they did in Uttar Pradesh. We the people are in a way lonely and those skilled physicians who can save our lives are bound hand and foot by under-educated politicians so that they won’t be able to save us- these politicians we elect each time casting our votes.
The Kerala government banned private practice of doctors employed in medical colleges, dental colleges and nursing colleges. All of these medical colleges were already suffering from acute shortage of experienced doctors and medical teachers after most of them having gone to foreign countries to take up better employment there. Government’s attempt to call them back from leave did not yield results; most of them just resigned from their positions or merely did not respond to these calls. Even if government had succeeded in recruiting new doctors to fill up vacant posts, they would not have got qualified and experienced doctors as hundreds of private hospitals also were vying for them. Senior medical students now carry on the running of medical colleges and the future of medical education in that state is dull. Government brought about this situation by forcing doctors to quit for joining private hospitals where they could continue home practice simultaneously. Allowing the home practice of doctors would have helped in maintaining the overall health care in the state and solved the problem of the dearth of experienced doctors in government hospitals, but things now have gone out of hands and control of the government. However much the government increased the pay of doctors, it had no effect on their remaining in service because no doctor did or would abandon home practice for sitting inert and idle in their homes. Either Kerala looses all qualified and experienced hands or they liberally allow private practice to retain experienced doctors in service, which is the predicament there. But as we have seen, maintaining the quality and uninterruptedness of patient care in the state is now no concern of the politicians and bureaucrats there. Each person comes as health minister, issues a few orders here and there, loosens a few foundation stones at critical points and vanishes into anonymity never to be heard again. Soon we will hear about something like the health establishment in the state has collapsed. Then we will hear about a government order banning patients in hospitals until they are fully insurance covered. It will not be too long before we hear that the whole set up has been given on lease to foreign consultancies for running. The last government order from these traitors would be the announcement of the sale of all government hospitals as a lot to foreign investors ‘for ensuring quality medical assistance to all, considering the interests of the state’. There would be no protestation riots from the youth organizations of even the revolutionary parties for it would be their leaders issuing these orders and excellently explaining everything in the light of Karl Marx’s theories of dialectical materialism and poor Lenin’s principles of class war.
Politicians and bureaucrats have the basic misconception that doctors, like them, care only for money and would forget the impact and influence of real good education. In Kerala, this banning of private practice was first enforced by a minister belonging to the central committee of the Communist Party of India Marxist-a party which is in intellectual darkness as regard to this issue-who thought that banning private practice of doctors was something simple and technical like banning illicit liquor, tobacco and plastic cover. Inspired by Kerala, politicians in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Orissa, and Maharashtra states also carried out similar raids on doctors’ homes and clinics arranged by medical council of India, which only alienated good doctors dedicated to patients. We know, Karnataka has the largest number of paper medical colleges where anyone can seek admission and pay and obtain medical degrees, protected or owned by the politicians and bureaucrats there, investigated never by any medical council. Where money and political power are involved, no investigations would be. The first thing the medial council of India ought to have investigated was involvement of large private hospitals in bringing about these bans and legislations and how much they paid politicians and bureaucrats to bring about this favourable kind of situation to keep their establishments afloat. Even 65 years after the British left India, they still have not been interested to open at least one dispensary in each village, forgetting which they are shutting down home practices.
The Kerala government banned private practice of doctors employed in medical colleges, dental colleges and nursing colleges. All of these medical colleges were already suffering from acute shortage of experienced doctors and medical teachers after most of them having gone to foreign countries to take up better employment there. Government’s attempt to call them back from leave did not yield results; most of them just resigned from their positions or merely did not respond to these calls. Even if government had succeeded in recruiting new doctors to fill up vacant posts, they would not have got qualified and experienced doctors as hundreds of private hospitals also were vying for them. Senior medical students now carry on the running of medical colleges and the future of medical education in that state is dull. Government brought about this situation by forcing doctors to quit for joining private hospitals where they could continue home practice simultaneously. Allowing the home practice of doctors would have helped in maintaining the overall health care in the state and solved the problem of the dearth of experienced doctors in government hospitals, but things now have gone out of hands and control of the government. However much the government increased the pay of doctors, it had no effect on their remaining in service because no doctor did or would abandon home practice for sitting inert and idle in their homes. Either Kerala looses all qualified and experienced hands or they liberally allow private practice to retain experienced doctors in service, which is the predicament there. But as we have seen, maintaining the quality and uninterruptedness of patient care in the state is now no concern of the politicians and bureaucrats there. Each person comes as health minister, issues a few orders here and there, loosens a few foundation stones at critical points and vanishes into anonymity never to be heard again. Soon we will hear about something like the health establishment in the state has collapsed. Then we will hear about a government order banning patients in hospitals until they are fully insurance covered. It will not be too long before we hear that the whole set up has been given on lease to foreign consultancies for running. The last government order from these traitors would be the announcement of the sale of all government hospitals as a lot to foreign investors ‘for ensuring quality medical assistance to all, considering the interests of the state’. There would be no protestation riots from the youth organizations of even the revolutionary parties for it would be their leaders issuing these orders and excellently explaining everything in the light of Karl Marx’s theories of dialectical materialism and poor Lenin’s principles of class war.
Politicians and bureaucrats have the basic misconception that doctors, like them, care only for money and would forget the impact and influence of real good education. In Kerala, this banning of private practice was first enforced by a minister belonging to the central committee of the Communist Party of India Marxist-a party which is in intellectual darkness as regard to this issue-who thought that banning private practice of doctors was something simple and technical like banning illicit liquor, tobacco and plastic cover. Inspired by Kerala, politicians in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Orissa, and Maharashtra states also carried out similar raids on doctors’ homes and clinics arranged by medical council of India, which only alienated good doctors dedicated to patients. We know, Karnataka has the largest number of paper medical colleges where anyone can seek admission and pay and obtain medical degrees, protected or owned by the politicians and bureaucrats there, investigated never by any medical council. Where money and political power are involved, no investigations would be. The first thing the medial council of India ought to have investigated was involvement of large private hospitals in bringing about these bans and legislations and how much they paid politicians and bureaucrats to bring about this favourable kind of situation to keep their establishments afloat. Even 65 years after the British left India, they still have not been interested to open at least one dispensary in each village, forgetting which they are shutting down home practices.
News: Health service fails to attract specialist doctors. 17 February 2014.
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