Timely life-saver

After putting a check on “admission industry” which made the centrally conducted medical entrance test NEET mandatory for medical colleges across the country, the Supreme Court has formed a three-member panel to reform the “unprofessional” Medical Council of India, to be headed by former Chief Justice on India, RM Lodha. All policy decisions of the MCI will now require approval of the committee. Last month a group of senior bureaucrats and doctors had urged the PM to revamp the “highly corrupt” medical regulator to bring in transparency in the council whose members, mostly from corporate hospitals, have allegedly “deep conflicts of interest.”  

To find a competent doctor in a hospital following ethical practices is progressively becoming a daunting task. In its recent report the Parliamentary Committee on Health has found the working of the MCI against the larger public health goals and recommended complete restructuring for its current “biased” composition. If this was not enough, reputed foreign medical journals have demanded a bar on Indian doctors, raising serious doubts about the quality of education imparted by medical institutions, regulated by the MCI. With the arrival of multinationals and corporate hospitals, private hospitals have made a killing. Even the most developed capitalist countries do not leave healthcare completely to the market; this has been done by successive governments in India.

The corporate hospitals’ profits have resulted in an estimated 3.5 crore Indians falling into debt and poverty annually, according to recent book, “Dissenting Diagnosis”. The book records experiences of 78 “whistleblower” doctors from different disciplines working in urban and rural areas and gives a chilling inside account of widespread malpractices afflicting the entire healthcare industry. While regulation of the private medical sector is an urgent need, serious efforts should be made towards developing a universal healthcare system on the lines adopted by other middle-income countries like Thailand and Brazil. This is not an unachievable task; but in the wake of cuts in the budgetary allocations for health, it seems unlikely.