To each his own in dengue-hit Delhi
t is only in a personal health crisis that you generally recognise the fact that we, as Indians, take our well being so casually that it becomes difficult to cope when one really gets ill. Delhi, as we all know, is in the midst of a dengue, conjunctivitis, swine flu, viral, typhoid and malaria epidemic even if one were to discount the growing cases of meningitis which are often fatal.
At the mouth of the Commonwealth Games this is the last thing that we needed. An already befuddled Government is trying to do its best to deal with the construction mess, the leaky stadiums due to a wet September and the growing traffic jams which prefer to be only upwardly mobile. Add to this a huge health situation facing the Capital and it will well be the last straw for the already harassed Government.
A dengue case in my family made me go beyond the routine stories on the viral mosquitoes and see the mess more closely. To say the least, the situation is more alarming than the yet to scream headlines would make you believe.
Here are some examples: My friend’s niece had a splitting headache and a stiff neck which her local doctor in Noida suspected to be meningitis. That triggered obvious panic and the run for hospitalisation. It may seem difficult to believe but the poor couple ran everywhere trying to get a bed in any hospital but was turned away because of non-availability. They screened almost all private hospitals from Noida to South Delhi to Gurgaon only to be told that an admission would not be possible. Finally, through some clout, they got one bed in Fortis, Gurgaon. It took them two days to get into a hospital which are brimming with patients coming in generally with the dengue scourge.
In a South Delhi hospital, many patients who could not get an admission in Max Hospital which was packed to capacity, queued up at smaller private hospitals for an admission. But there too all was full. Not just that, many of the hospitals had to turn away patients despite having the beds as they did not have an adequate stock of platelets and with no machines available to process the platelets from the blood, the patients and their relatives were a hapless lot, not knowing where to go and how to save themselves from dying because of scarcity of equipment.
Not just that. The other more alarming thing about this grave medical situation is the fact that all doctors have a different opinion, a different treatment (if there is any treatment at all for dengue) to offer you. This not only confuses the patient but also retards his recovery. One accomplished doctor will tell you that you are being put on a dose of antibiotics to do away with any secondary bacterial infection that your low immunity level may not be able to combat in a dengue situation. You go to another one after five days of no relief and he looks at the previous prescription to ask you angrily, why the hell was your patient on antibiotic in a viral trap like dengue (antibiotics cannot treat viruses). He then says that another drug prescribed by your previous doctor is like poison.
You almost cringe with fear but this new one is not finished scaring the daylights out of you. He says, platelets need not have been monitored for the first five days. They fall only after the fever starts receding after the fifth day. According to him, the thing to monitor is the haemoglobin count which should not shoot up, as also the enlargement of the liver. He tells you, much unlike your previous doctor who had by then tested your platelets six times already, dengue becomes critical only after the fifth day and that’s when the monitoring should begin!
You come out confused wondering who to go to now, what to believe, what to get tested and where. Next come the pathologies. Well, if you had not been killed already by all the doctoral confusion reigning around you, definitely the wrong reports will fell you.
I had my spouse’s blood tested six times, thrice in one lab, once in another and twice in yet another in a matter of six days. Every time, the platelet count either rose or fell by 50000! Needless to say, the panic was such that even the doctor kept saying that something was not right with the pathology.
Really, it is one big business for the pathologies that have unscrupulously come up all over the Capital. Most of them have tie-ups with the hospitals where you see these doctors who insist that the tests should be done in their lab, prescribing many high-priced ones which you may not require. But when you ask them why there is no uniformity in results they have very little to say except throw some irritation at you for asking too many questions!
About going to Government hospitals where the doctors have no vested interest to fleece you, we all know how difficult it is to reach a doctor there, especially when your patient is almost falling off in weakness, unable to stand in the unending queue of OPD!
Suffice it to say, the healthcare mess is the biggest mess that India faces and it is totally not equipped to deal with a situation despite it flowering in medical tourism. About time that the Government gets going on long-term laws to put the house in order instead of pretending to take measures as and when a catastrophe hits the city.
Making committees to monitor dengue is no solution if the local body throws up its hand to say it cannot even spray the Capital properly with anti-mosquito agents! It again boils down to accountability, something we do not have in any department of life whatsoever.
Meanwhile, as a population virtually disowned by your Government the least you can do is take personal measures to stay out of this gargantuan health mess. Be clean, don’t store water, wear clothes that cover most of your body and never ever take any unhealthy symptom non-seriously.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, September 5, 2010
At the mouth of the Commonwealth Games this is the last thing that we needed. An already befuddled Government is trying to do its best to deal with the construction mess, the leaky stadiums due to a wet September and the growing traffic jams which prefer to be only upwardly mobile. Add to this a huge health situation facing the Capital and it will well be the last straw for the already harassed Government.
A dengue case in my family made me go beyond the routine stories on the viral mosquitoes and see the mess more closely. To say the least, the situation is more alarming than the yet to scream headlines would make you believe.
Here are some examples: My friend’s niece had a splitting headache and a stiff neck which her local doctor in Noida suspected to be meningitis. That triggered obvious panic and the run for hospitalisation. It may seem difficult to believe but the poor couple ran everywhere trying to get a bed in any hospital but was turned away because of non-availability. They screened almost all private hospitals from Noida to South Delhi to Gurgaon only to be told that an admission would not be possible. Finally, through some clout, they got one bed in Fortis, Gurgaon. It took them two days to get into a hospital which are brimming with patients coming in generally with the dengue scourge.
In a South Delhi hospital, many patients who could not get an admission in Max Hospital which was packed to capacity, queued up at smaller private hospitals for an admission. But there too all was full. Not just that, many of the hospitals had to turn away patients despite having the beds as they did not have an adequate stock of platelets and with no machines available to process the platelets from the blood, the patients and their relatives were a hapless lot, not knowing where to go and how to save themselves from dying because of scarcity of equipment.
Not just that. The other more alarming thing about this grave medical situation is the fact that all doctors have a different opinion, a different treatment (if there is any treatment at all for dengue) to offer you. This not only confuses the patient but also retards his recovery. One accomplished doctor will tell you that you are being put on a dose of antibiotics to do away with any secondary bacterial infection that your low immunity level may not be able to combat in a dengue situation. You go to another one after five days of no relief and he looks at the previous prescription to ask you angrily, why the hell was your patient on antibiotic in a viral trap like dengue (antibiotics cannot treat viruses). He then says that another drug prescribed by your previous doctor is like poison.
You almost cringe with fear but this new one is not finished scaring the daylights out of you. He says, platelets need not have been monitored for the first five days. They fall only after the fever starts receding after the fifth day. According to him, the thing to monitor is the haemoglobin count which should not shoot up, as also the enlargement of the liver. He tells you, much unlike your previous doctor who had by then tested your platelets six times already, dengue becomes critical only after the fifth day and that’s when the monitoring should begin!
You come out confused wondering who to go to now, what to believe, what to get tested and where. Next come the pathologies. Well, if you had not been killed already by all the doctoral confusion reigning around you, definitely the wrong reports will fell you.
I had my spouse’s blood tested six times, thrice in one lab, once in another and twice in yet another in a matter of six days. Every time, the platelet count either rose or fell by 50000! Needless to say, the panic was such that even the doctor kept saying that something was not right with the pathology.
Really, it is one big business for the pathologies that have unscrupulously come up all over the Capital. Most of them have tie-ups with the hospitals where you see these doctors who insist that the tests should be done in their lab, prescribing many high-priced ones which you may not require. But when you ask them why there is no uniformity in results they have very little to say except throw some irritation at you for asking too many questions!
About going to Government hospitals where the doctors have no vested interest to fleece you, we all know how difficult it is to reach a doctor there, especially when your patient is almost falling off in weakness, unable to stand in the unending queue of OPD!
Suffice it to say, the healthcare mess is the biggest mess that India faces and it is totally not equipped to deal with a situation despite it flowering in medical tourism. About time that the Government gets going on long-term laws to put the house in order instead of pretending to take measures as and when a catastrophe hits the city.
Making committees to monitor dengue is no solution if the local body throws up its hand to say it cannot even spray the Capital properly with anti-mosquito agents! It again boils down to accountability, something we do not have in any department of life whatsoever.
Meanwhile, as a population virtually disowned by your Government the least you can do is take personal measures to stay out of this gargantuan health mess. Be clean, don’t store water, wear clothes that cover most of your body and never ever take any unhealthy symptom non-seriously.
Source: Sunday Pioneer, September 5, 2010
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