outrunning rabbits

Rounds at ICU. 4 patients being cared for following suicidal attempt with organophos ingestion. 2 young men, one girl and another woman. All impulsive decisions reacting to petty issues at home. One wonders - are these petty issues enough to push one into choices and decisions to take their own life. Or are there underlying deeper issues which has been simmering and the current event was an oil poured into the smouldering fire? And then it bursts out. These are not occasional events but in this part of the 'shining India' it is quite common. 600 such patients each year in this one hospital!

At least one of them had taken money from a lender at 4/100 per month, making it 48% interest. And I heard this from other patients too, a net work of local financing systems which are owned and run by powerful mafia pushing the unsuspecting poor into abject poverty, in these 'good days' of India.

And the next bed was a lady delivered at a local hospital, 9 hours prior to being referred, with continous bleeding, with uterus inverted by undue manipulation and in shock. Again not uncommon stories -  two to three complicated obstetrics cases every day being referred from a health care system which is driven by anything other than quality. In the era of subcontracting health care to private providers, if this is the future of health care in this emerging Asian powerful nation of ours, I am not sure if the future holds much hope!

Session 2 of morning was with 20 government doctors training them in family medicine. A group which is a cohort from the public health care system of the state. Keen senior doctors who have had never seen any health care system other than the one they are part of, and eagerly imbibing the little additional knowledge which the small institution I am part of, is able to provide. And this too in an era where AIIMS,corporate hospitals are mushrooming every day. These doctors neither fit in to the academic requirements of ivory tower institutions nor economically useful for the corporate institutions to engage with! But keen to learn and contribute but not many options in this part of India!

I am returning to this location after 20 years to work. I felt at home - nothing much had changed from 1994. If this is the pace of the invisible India make over, unlike the pace I saw in Delhi over last 10 years, which is what the media promotes, we are definitely progressing at a snails pace.

May be like the tortoise which outran the rabbit, this part of nation also will outrun the visible India one day. Will I be alive to see this?



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