Funds vanish in stinking sickbay

This kind of story is so common in rural UP that people are surprised that anyone should even be interested. Ravi Kumar, after all, is still alive and there are so many who die on their way to hospital. This is especially true of villages where there are no proper roads.

Bagadpur is one such village. To reach it you drive down a dirt track from Garhmukteshwar, and even in a car it takes so long that the idea of transporting a sick person in the middle of the night is frightening.

So, most women continue to have babies at home and the sick rely on desi medicine. I spent an hour or so in the house of the village headman talking to local people about their medical needs and the first thing they told me was about the number of babies who died of stomach ailments because it took so long to get them to hospital. A farmer, Harinder Singh, said, 8216;8216;Old people are the other ones who die on the way to hospital because we have to take them to Garh or Meerut. To find a big hospital you have to go to Meerut which is 45 kilometres from here.8217;8217;

They said they were forced to rely on private clinics because their experience with government healthcare was so bad. But they also offered a solution 8212; the money spent on local health centres and hospitals should be routed through the panchayat, they said, because they would then know exactly where it was going.

They also wanted a primary health centre built in the village so that routine ailments like cold and fever could be treated without going to Garhmukteshwar.

When I asked if they had discussed this with their Samajwadi Party MLA, who comes from a neighbouring village, they said they had not seen him since the last election and that was the crux of their problems. There was nobody to complain to 8212; no official or politician ever came to the village except during election time.

The situation is worse in the towns and cities of UP, again because investment has been made in buildings rather than ambulances, hospital beds and medicines. So, Hapur hospital which looks big enough to have at least 200 beds has 200 out-patients instead and 30 beds that lie empty.

Just as well because the mattresses and sheets are so filthy, so stained with blood and other bodily fluids that a sick person would only get worse.

Medical Superintendant Dr A K Goel looked puzzled at the mention of hygiene; he assumed I was talking about the broken windows and the generally decrepit condition of the building. 8216;8216;We try to do minor repairs ourselves,8217;8217; he said, 8216;8216;but these broken doors and windows cannot be repaired because I have to get permission from the district headquarters and that can sometimes take three months.8217;8217;

When he finally figured out what I was talking about, he had yet another excuse. 8216;8216;We don8217;t have enough Class IV employees. We try to have the floors swept every morning and evening but there is so much dust, we cannot help it.8217;8217; When it was pointed out that in most developed countries there were no Class IV employees and it was generally the nursing staff and doctors who ensured that the wards were kept clean, he looked genuinely confused and conceded that perhaps there was scope for improvement.

The biggest hospital I visited was in Moradabad. It is nearly as big as government hospitals in Delhi and Mumbai, but again instead of wards and facilities for patients the emphasis seems to have been on administrative blocks and doctors8217; offices and quarters.

But, here, at least there were patients in the wards and some who had even been operated on were happy that they had paid only Rs 1000 for surgeries that would have cost Rs 50,000 at a private hospital.

There was little else, though, to be happy about. Not only did they have to pay for all their medicines but also for bedpans and clean sheets. The hospital did not provide patients with even a cup of tea in the morning. A woman, recuperating from an operation, pointed to vomit stains on her sheet and said, 8216;8216;When I asked the sister to change the sheet, she said it could only be done once in eight days.8217;8217; If patients want blankets or sheets to cover themselves with, they bring them from home.

Of standards of hygiene the less said the better. They do not exist. Blood-stained cotton and bandages lie amid used syringes beside an open drain outside the emergency room and stray dogs wander in the corridors and sometimes take a nap in the wards.

The toilets are so filthy that it is not possible to walk past without holding your nose. When a patient pointed out that there was no light, he was told to go and buy his own bulb.

When I asked the emergency room doctor about hygiene, he gave me the usual shortage of 8216;8216;Class IV employees8217;8217; excuse and when I pointed out that the rubber mats on the stretchers next to him were caked with blood 8212; surely he himself could have changed that 8212; he looked as if he had noticed it for the first time.

Then, as usual, came the excuses. It was the patients8217; fault, he said; they were always accompanied by too many relatives and there were no strict visitors8217; hours. As for the dogs, well what could the hospital do when there were not enough people to guard the entrances.

Everywhere, the same sickening litany of stupid excuses and everywhere the same shocking waste of taxpayers8217; money on buildings instead of medical facilities. It is not a question of a shortage of money 8212; because a great deal of money has been spent 8212; but lack of a genuine desire to provide real healthcare. It8217;s as if the entire system had been designed to provide government jobs and patronage.

On my return to Delhi I heard that Mayawati had called a press conference to celebrate a year of being Chief Minister. I went along to see if she would mention healthcare or the appalling condition of the hospitals her government controls.

She did not and nobody asked. But, if she is genuinely concerned about the poor, whom she claims to represent as a 8216;8216;Dalit ki beti8217;8217;, she should begin her second year in power by ordering a report into what has gone wrong with healthcare. Just by doing that she would be doing more than any other Chief Minister has done for UP in a long, long time. Concluded

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