By The Editor

The sterilization incident in Chhattisgarh is a stark reminder of our ailing public medical system. The negligence for which we are so well known throughout the world has again cost us dearly in both lives and embarrassment. Government medical hospitals and colleges in urban areas are riddled with overcrowding, corruption, mismanagement and typical style of wholesale treatment of patients but when situation is critical in cities what about those in remote villages and rural places.

Population is definitely a burden to us and our people are not obedient like Chinese to follow one child policy. So our government came up with sterilization program to curb the numbers but often the administration of these programs have more undesirable than fruitful effects. Subjects are either forced or lured into the program through material and monetary offers. Often these schemes are overseen by doctors and officials who are more worried about numbers of operations, bonuses and credit that comes with it. The concerned doctor in this case was also given the recognition for doing over 50,000 surgeries. Were those operations were done in a similar manner we don’t know but the reports of several patients being treated with same syringe brings the motivation to question but he is not the only culprit. Ill trained, underpaid staff, syphoning of drugs, tainted contracts, unclean facilities, lack of infrastructure, equipment and anything you can name, doesn’t tilt the balance in patients favour either. Drugs are a major concern, rarely they are up to safety levels specified by government let alone international standards. Couple of while back there were reports of some major multinational pharmaceutical companies testing there drugs on tribal women like guinea pigs. There is no such thing as patient’s informed consent for the poor, who are more or less treated like cattle and had the casualty rate been one or two, hardly anyone would have cared for the incident except for few lines in the local newspapers.

We have a tendency to take everything for granted; public works, utilities and structure are left to their fate. Those of us who can pay, choose private hospitals and those who can’t don’t have any choice. Yes, there is corruption, yes, there is greed, yes, that’s also true that no system is perfect but our problem are not any of these our problem is giving up. Our leaders lack the will to want better for us and we lack the foresight to choose our leaders. After few days this incident and victims will fade away from our media, memories and would become a statistic in government files. The loss will be for those whose mother, wife and sisters are gone, just another nameless Indian who had no reason to die.