WEST BENGAL

A Planned Assault On The Healthcare System

B Prasant

OVER the past week, a planned assault has been launched against the state-run healthcare system in Bengal.  Organised and abetted by the opposition parties, chiefly the Trinamul Congress, the BJP, the Pradesh Congress, and the SUCI, the series of attacks saw doctors being beaten up, patients forced to go away from hospitals without getting admitted, and relatives of patients chased away and assaulted. Ironically, the latest of the incidents saw a section of the electronic media finding itself at the receiving end when they were attacked a by a section of junior doctors who swear by the Trinamul Congress and the BJP.

The entire chain of events started in the last week of October when a group of Trinamul Congress goons beat up the superintendent of the Bongaon hospital in north 24 Parganas.  A patient brought to the hospital in a critical condition, died and this sad occasion was utilised by the local Trinamul Congress goons who ransacked the hospital and assaulted the attending doctors and the superintendent.

A few days earlier, a cot death had occurred at the Uttarpara state general hospital.  The Trinamul Congress goons launched an assault on the doctors and the nursing staff alleging their negligence had ‘caused the child to die.’  Even as the parents of the child wrote to the hospital superintendent stating that they would not even think of blaming the hospital authorities for the unfortunate demise of their child, the Trinamul Congress goons went on a big rampage inside the hospital premises. 

In the same week, a very tragic event took place at the Memari hospital in Burdwan.  A group of Pradesh Congress rowdies chose to ‘demonstrate against untenable conditions’ in the Memari hospital by proceeding to force a specialist physician attending a man severely injured by electrocution, to come out of the wards to face the deputation.  In a most cruel gesture, even as the relatives of the patients pleaded for releasing the concerned doctor, the goons detained the doctor and the patient slowly sank and died.  The Pradesh Congress miscreants then utilised the tragic death to ransack the hospital and beat up doctors and nurses.  Such events continued to occur sporadically all across the state.

An interesting if devious occurrence that inevitably accompanied the assault on the healthcare system was the presence of the electronic media every time such an event unfolded.  There is nothing unnatural or mystifying about the presence of the corporate media even before the rampaging would commence.  The local chiefs of the opposition parties would inform the media over cell phones about the impending assault and the rampage and the latter would oblige by sending a camera team out to the place where the unfortunate proceedings would be set up as a deliberate ploy to try to convince the people of the ‘pitiable conditions’ prevailing in the state-run hospitals.

This dangerous game would also grab the headlines of the corporate-run print media like the Ananda Bazar Patrika, the Telegraph, the Times of India, the Statesman, and the Hindustan Times, and the Bartaman.  The newspapers ran lurid headlines focussing attention of the reading public to the ‘news’ and followed it up by editorialising about it.

Things went wrong for these worthies on November 1 when the electronic media itself was attacked by student doctors, interns, and house staffs of the R G Kar medical college in north Kolkata.  There appeared to have occurred a gap in the communication network of the media and the opposition parties as a media team arrived when the junior doctors were beating up a couple for having committed the ‘crime’ of protesting the sudden death of a patient who had been administered an injection by a junior doctor earlier.

As the vehicles of the media rolled inside of the hospital premises caring a fig for regulations that prevent such an entry, the junior doctors rushed out and started to rain blows from staves and stones on the cameramen and the reporters.  They ripped apart the video cameras, they smashed up the cars, they chased the media persons about the hospital, and finally when the Police arrived to control the situation, they grabbed hold of Police rifle, and smashed the butt open with stones and tried to make off with the bullet clips.  It was then that the Police swung into action by taking into custody one junior doctor even as the others fled.

The next morning saw the same junior doctors staging a sit-in demonstration inside the hospital and preventing patients from being admitted—all in the name of ‘mismanagement in the hospital.’  Putting journalistic practices to shame the corporate press provided much greater focus on the front page to the doctors’ striking work than to the deeds the same set of doctors had meted out to their friends in the electronic media the night before.

The next day, the state Left Front government announced the termination of the housemanship of the two principal culprits both of whom owe allegiance to the SUCI, and suspending four interns who belong to the Trinamul Congress.  The state LF government has also started to initiate discussions with the media about the unrestrained access the media has acquired for themselves inside of even the wards, without paying heed to agony such incursions cause to the patients.  The state LF government has already banned all demonstrations, rallies, and processions inside the hospitals.

The CPI(M) state secretary, Anil Biswas has said that the concerted effort being made to create disruption in state-run hospitals and health centres was an attempt to look to the consolidation of interests of the private-run health sector.  He has called upon the people of the state to come forward and thwart all efforts at sabotaging the ongoing initiative of the state Left Front government to bring about further improvements to the existing healthcare system in Bengal.

Biswas said that under pressure from the forces of globalised neo-liberalism, the social responsibility over health matters was being fast shed by the BJP-run union government and at a time when the healthcare system was being commodified and drugs were going out of the reach of the mass of the people thanks to the Patents Act, a planned assault was being brought up against the pro-people Left Front government in Bengal.  These assaults were attempts to safeguard the interests of those who make health a business practice with an eye to profit rather than care.  A slander campaign has been let loose against the doctors, the nurses, and the health employees.  Nobody in the right frame of mind would accept the incursions by the opposition and the media inside of the wards of the hospitals and health centres, said Anil Biswas who also called upon the state LF government to keep up its drive to bring about improvements in the health care and health delivery systems.

Even a cursory look at the healthcare system in Bengal would make one realise the true picture.  Each year nearly four-and-a-half crore of patients come to the hospitals as outpatients, and 32 lakhs are admitted.  In the district hospitals alone, there are nearly two lakh cases of surgery each year, and nearly four lakhs of babies are born in the state-run hospitals.  The following table highlights the utilisation by the people of the state of the district hospitals about which so much lies and canards are being spread in the corporate media.

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