Beware of Killers, and Remember
Prevention
Is Better Than Cure
Who are you, who am I? We are assets of
our family to be lost soon to greed. We are assets to killers who, as agents of
others, kill for money. Both the agent, who is remote controlled, and the boss
who remains behind the transparent screen, are guided by Greed. The agent
forgets the oath (known as the Hippocratic
Oath for physicians) taken before embarking on
the ‘Noble Profession’ to have compassion, to "First do no harm"
(Latin: Primum non nocere) and also to “utterly reject harm and
mischief” (Latin: noxamvero et maleficium propulsabo).
They,
in a ceremony take, just to forget the next moment, the following oath:
“I swear to fulfill, to the best of my
ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific
gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such
knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the
sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of over
treatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to
medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may
outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
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| CM Mamata Banerjee with the top representatives of private hospitals and nursing homes of WB. Courtesy: Hindustan Times |
I will not be ashamed to say "I know
not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another
are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my
patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know.
Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. Above all,
I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a
fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may
affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes
these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can but
I will always look for a path to a cure for all diseases.
I will remember that I remain a member of
society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, sound of mind
and body as well as the infirm.
If I
do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and
remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the
finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing
those who seek my help.”
(Written in 1964 by Louis Lasagna,
Academic Dean of the School of Medicine at Tufts University).
What we see around today in West Bengal is
the violation of the covenant. We have disease means we are assets for the
violators of the covenant. The family of the sick becomes the easy prey to the
greed of the vultures among the medical practitioners. They spend, in many
cases, all they have and then lose their assets to the greed of those they
believed were their messiahs. The losers are helpless people, unable to seek and
find justice in the court of law because they don’t have the capacity to fight
protracted battles.
Antonio could be protected from the greed and cruelty of Shylock because
a Portia was there to argue his case in the court of the Venetian Duke (The
Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare). Should we expect Chief Minister
Mamata Banerjee will be able to protect the sick in future from the vultures
with stringent legislation and the judiciary can go for suo motto action
against the culprits? What happens is not the fallout of negligence, but of
sheer greed.
The
Chief Minister on 22 February in a meeting at the Town Hall, Kolkata,
with the top representatives of dozens of private hospitals and nursing homes
of the state, echoed the popular grievances and hauled them up for overcharging
patients and shoddy service.
“Is the kidney racket still going on in
your hospital?” lashed out chief minister Mamata Banerjee leaving the
representative of one of the prominent private hospitals of Kolkata fumbling
for answers.
“I will not allow any kidney racket, or baby racket, to run in Bengal ,” she
remarked while speaking to authorities of Medica Superspeciality Hospital
“I was speaking with someone from Bangladesh
