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 Sometimes,
patients are incapacitated for life and at other times even have to pay
with their lives. Much of it
goes unreported since most deaths occur some time after the patient has
been under the treatment of the quack and especially if he dies at home.
Only if it is a glaring instance of foul play, where a seriously
ill patient dies almost immediately after the administration of some drug
at the clinic, that people begin to cast aspersions on the credibility of
the “doctor”. And that is
when the so-called doctor if he happens to be a quack, panics and usually
spills the beans especially when up against police pressure to speak the
truth.
While
a vast majority of our doctors can’t resist the lure of lucre and seek
greener pastures of practice overseas or in towns and cities here in
India, the rural folk are left to choose from many such pretenders.
These men know virtually nothing about medical science or for that
matter about human anatomy and physiology.
They have usually been old fashioned “compounders” who had
worked with some doctor or the other, or for that matter, aspiring
students of medicine, or even dropouts of medical colleges.
Some of them have pursued short-term correspondence courses in some
alternative system of medicine or the other offered by universities that
are not even recognized and start practicing, when they prescribe even
allopathic drugs to unsuspecting patients who approach them like the
proverbial lamb being led to the slaughter!
These
quacks, however, are not to be confused with the practitioners of some
form of indigenous medicine or the other.
There have been "hakims" and "vaids" in villages who
spend a lifetime perfecting their own unique art of healing and many
people benefit by them to. In
their case, it is usually a family tradition that is handed down to each
successive generation by the one preceding it.
However, for serious ailments that require corrective surgery or hospitalization
or for the terminally ill patient there is no real
substitute for the allopathic system of medicine.
Villages also have indigenous midwives or "dais" who assist in
deliveries and have generally made a good job of it. However, one cannot ignore the fact that infant mortality
rates are much higher in villages where there is no properly trained gynecologist
available, especially when complications develop and a
caesarean section is necessitated.
It
is a pity the government has still been unable to provide basic health
care facilities for the rural poor. Disease, malnutrition, over-population and lack of primary
education still continue to bedevil in our country, which has touched the
billion mark already. One out
of every six human beings on planet Earth is now an Indian! Health is a primary need and concern of both the individual
and the society he lives in. Good
health is basic to the well being of an individual.
Even if full-fledged medical graduates are not trained and sent to
the rural areas, experts have suggested putting those who would be
interested through a short-term crash course in the basics of medicine
along with human anatomy and physiology and give them a valid certificate
and government license to help provide primary health care to people in
the rural areas. That
suggestion has been made several times now but seems to have fallen on the
deaf ears of the powers that be. Alas!
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