Dr Nitin Bhagali, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Pune: I have been in private practice for last 30 plus years and I am a witness to the sea of change in doctor patient relationship, changing and at times unrealistic expections of the society, anti doctor propaganda in the media along with increasing trend of penalising the doctors by the judiciary!!! After full knowledge of the fact that medicine can never be a foolproof science people like to point at the doctors for unsuccessful outcomes! Basic reason for increasing disregard towards our profession is inflating cost of the healthcare. Majority of Indians do not provide for healthcare in their budgets and sudden emergencies give them a shock mentally and financially as well. Media will keep on glorifying the wealthiest ones in the list of Fortune 100 or how Shahrukh and Salman deserve crores for a movie or ad and how Sachin made at least a few lakhs per each run he scored on the ground and also how astronomical fees Sibbals, Singvis and Jaitleys command! But for our society its not a right of the doctors to demand a decent fees for the most intricate job he may perform.. He is not supposed to have an exuberant life style despite working hard and at odd hours day in and day out and even sacrifying family time on holidays and weekends. Society ignores the fact that doctor’s life is at as much risk as a soldier while treating and operating cases of HIV, hepatitis B, open tuberculosis, ebola and at least half a dozen more communicable diseases. Amongst all classes of professionals they are the only ones who offer their services on charity. Please inform me if any association of architects or builders have done do after disasters in Killari or Bhuj or Malin! Also tell me if any group of lawyers have fought for the victims of Bhopal. People want to sue the doctors when they are not successful in producing favourable results and want them to be under the perview of Consumer Protection Act on one side but don’t want them to enjoy benefits as businessmen when helping pharma companies to reap in profits. These double standards of the system are really frustrating. I strongly oppose the current move of this government to enforce code of ethics on pharma companies restricting their patronage of supporting doctors.We as doctors never look up to these companies to get expensive gifts or foreign tours and cruise etc but we certainly appreciate their assistance in attending important academic events and receiving books and journals. How is it ethical for pharma companies to finance associations of doctors and not individuals If the intention of the government is to benefit the consumers in the hope that companies will lower the prices by enforcing a code, better do following things also. Why single out healthcare sector alone? 1. Remove the middlemen and commission agencies in grocery, fruit and vegetables markets. 2. Curtail advertisement budgets for all consumer sements. 3. Enforce austerity measures on employees like restricting air travels, 5 star stays, LTAs 4. No pension to MLAs, MPs . Reduce their perks to save outgo on nonproductive expenditure. 5. Let all MPs, minsters IAS officers, officers in services stay in apartments and not in plush luxurious bungalows at tax payers costs. 6 Give them mediclaim coverage and no actuals. 7.Bring all political parties under the perview of RTI and get expenses of private air travels by people like Sonia, Mungantiwar recovered first! 8. Make it mandatory for all manufacturers to stop extending schemes to the retailers to push their sales. You can add many more to the list to stop draining of public resources. If all this help save the trouble for the consumers, enforce all possible restrictions on alliance of doctors and pharma cos. Dear collegues, please wake up. Hold your colleagues hand , stand erect otherwise you will find yourself buried under the burden of expectations of the society!!!!
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 13:22:04 +0000