Why people shun government hospitals?
Sunday - July 22, 2018 10:19 am ,
Category : WTN SPECIAL
(WTN) Healthcare is a basic necessity of the people. Everything else can be undermined, downplayed or neglected but there is no one who can ignore his or her healthcare needs because it is a question of life and death. In a welfare state like India, the onus of maintaining good healthcare facilities for the people should be a government prerogative and responsibility. This is why, majority of the Indian population gets its health needs catered to by government facilities in the form of healthcare centres and cheap or free medicines provided by the government.
Unfortunately, the government set up is mostly not up to the expected standards and people, despite their financial constraints, have to avoid the government hospitals in favour of private ones. In the cities the situation is better but the same cannot be said of the rural hospitals. These healthcare centres are often known to lack proper doctors, technical facilities and infrastructure to meet the requirements of the large population that depends on each such hospital.
India is in any case terribly short of doctors and good doctors hardly are eager to come to serve in the village, which makes the balance skewed and the proverbial rural urban divide more telling and cruel. Moreover, there is lack of monitoring and accountability of government hospital staffers that also keep needy patients away. The voice of the poor is not heard and most government hospitals have ill-behaved staffers, including doctors, who treat patients as a professional hazard.
Many hospitals run short of important medicines, while in many there is shortage of water and toilets. Many hospitals run without important machines for years and many hospitals don’t have proper electricity or generator facilities. Many hospitals don’t have a permanent doctor while many others don’t have an ambulance. There are continuous incidents of babies dying in government hospitals, rodents or dogs eating up babies, lack of x-ray or dialysis facilities in them and negligence by doctors leading to patient’s death etc, which create a bad image of the government healthcare system in the country. There is corruption in appointments and transfers and action is not taken against errant medicos or healthcare staff, which lead to this lack of a robust and efficient system.
In some hospitals there is more than adequate of everything, while in many, there are not even fans and drinking water kiosks. Government spending on healthcare is also on the lower side that causes logistic lacks. There is a long entrenched work culture in the system that is obsolete and unfruitful. Despite sporadic short-term stop gap measures now and then, the whole structure has remained the same for the last six decades and therefore an overhauling is highly impending which the government needs to take up on priority. Our poor government healthcare facilities have a big role to play in lowering our human development indices.
