Healthcare at the grassroots
With Human Rights Day around the corner -- December 10, to be precise -- the national committee of Health Rights Movement held an interactive session of experts on the subject: 'public physicians and treatment at the grassroots level'. A lively exchange of views took place evolving on the theme: providing health service is not only a matter of duty for the state but also a fundamental rights issue with the people.
The duty approach involving obligations on the part of the government's healthcare system as well as private health infrastructure of clinics to provide healthcare, particularly to the vast majority of the people has not been able to deliver goods. That is why in the rights-conscious world of today, the thought of treating health and welfare of the citizenry as a rights issue has gained considerable ground.
This extended definition of public health responsibilities calls for both an inclusive policy formulation responsive to the needs of the ordinary citizens as well as making it binding on the hospitals, health complexes and clinics to provide such service on pain of legal action. What is a right worth, if it is not legally enforceable on being denied? In other words, people deprived of health service on demand need to be taken under the wings of healthcare systems reaching out to them as a matter of guarantee.
Yet, given the reality on the ground, where duty-based service is badly wanting in spite of the Hypocratic oath, the expected right-oriented treatment may sound somewhat utopian. Neverthe-less, we should strive to achieve the twin goal: where duty fails, right should take over.
We have an extensive network of rural health complexes, structurally deemed to be one of the best among the developing countries. The misfortune, however, begins where these are turned into empty shells with absenteeism among doctors, lack of staff supervision, dearth of medicines, rusting away of equipment and non-maintenance of the ward beds and the OPD.
The issue basically is two fold: shortage of human resources at the grassroots so much so that a survey found that out of the 4,133 recently-recruited government doctors, 47 per cent do not attend their work places regularly.
The lack of seriousness and that of coordination is not merely indefensible but culpable as well. Things better change.
Comments