Will we combat the apathetic reality of our terrible health care?

It was somewhere in 2006-7 when I received a call at the palliative care home I worked at that was then situated in Darya Ganj, Old Delhi. Our colleague in the remote town of Churachandpur, Manipur had been diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and needed to be brought to Delhi since they could not treat him in Churachandpur. Logistics were quickly organized and before we knew it, a team of us were waiting to pick him up at the Delhi airport.

After spending a few days at the care home, his condition began deteriorating and he had to be rushed to Lok Nayak Hospital. It must have been less than a week at the hospital when his condition worsened further. The doctor checked and informed us that he was in need of a ventilator, failing which he may not survive. From around 11 pm to about 3 am, a care worker from the care home and I ran from one department to another, from the ICU to the HOD's office to the Medical Superintendent's office. We even made calls to other government hospitals requesting a ventilator. In the end, the doctor on duty told us there was no time and if a ventilator was not available, the next best option was to use a manual resuscitator. Taking turns, the care worker and I pumped the hand-held device hoping to stabilise our friend's, our colleague's breath. Until that moment came when he didn't breathe anymore.

I was in my twenties and as I say there on the dingy dirty spit-covered staircase of the government hospital I questioned everything. Why this struggle? Why this death? Why this dearth? Why? This wasn't the first incident and surely wouldn't be the last.

Almost fifteen year later, I sit scrolling through social media and quietly listen to people over phone calls. There is anger, a desperation, fear and an intense surge among my peers. Covid-19 ripped through the lives of people in a manner never before experienced by my generation of people, or majority of us who belong to the blurry-lined Indian middle class. How many of us experienced first-hand the devastating impacts of malaria or tuberculosis or even diarrhoea? Weren't such illnesses— that take lives, that damage the fabric of families—gareeb logon ki bimari (poor man's illness)? Didn't these illnesses come from poor living conditions, bad quality of water and from not having enough money to seek treatment? Isn't that the reason gareeb log (poor people) contracted and died of these illnesses?

Up until my late thirties, when Covid-19 shattered the facades we live behind, not very many people in India spoke so fervently about the rotten conditions of our healthcare system. Nor did most people hurriedly gather resources, create hashtags or made urgent phone calls to get help for those gasping for their last breaths. Those who did, were considered social workers and activists, which was not always a compliment at social or family gatherings and was often received with hints of condescension.

The general unspoken comfort in knowing that we either had access to resources that saved us from life-threatening illnesses or enough money to seek treatment at a private hospital was enough. We were safe. The fact that 60 per cent of our population who lives in rural regions had only 24,855 public health centres across the country in 2019 didn't really affect our drive to the local pub or club.

Neither did the fact that in 2019, out of the daily footfall of approximately 15,000 people at AIIMS seeking treatment, only around 2000 were admitted on a daily basis. If only one day, instead of driving down to Adchini or Hauz Khas village, someone had walked into the compounds of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjang hospital in the heart of Delhi. The reality of thousands of people lying around under the scorching sun or the chill of December, waiting for their chance to be seen by a doctor, would have perhaps built a movement much sooner.

Did we ever bother to question the system before it became personal, before gareeb logon ki bimari became our own reality with Covid-19? Suddenly, we are surprised that India doesn't have enough hospital beds or even supplies. Whereas, according to the 2019 National Health Profile, there were only 0.55 government hospital beds per 1000 population and only around 915 government allopathic doctors per 10,00,000 population. This was a whole year before COVID-19 snatched away our freedoms and securities, before it brought us down to the masses…for whom inaccessibility to healthcare has been and continues to be a generational reality.

Yes, our governments haven't made the least of efforts to ease the pain, the suffering, the angst. Yes, every thinkable system in our country is corrupt. And yes, instead of thinking of saving human lives, everything is politicised with an agenda to win the next election. But what about our own apathy towards our failing systems before it became personal? Where was the outcry and where was our anger towards the broken healthcare system before it personally affected us? How are we, who spew pseudo-intellectual jargan 20 times a day on social media, so different from the governments we accuse? Aren't we also only piggy backing on the poor to take a stand for ourselves? Trampling once again the spirit of the poor, just to make a point about some global inequality that we perpetuate with every single thing we consume.

It is time we really take a stand and stop exploiting the plight, misery and anguish of the poor to inflate our already self-indulgent egos. Will we continue to fight the good fight once this horrific pandemic subsides and is concentrated only in the overcrowded slums or the most rural regions of India? Will we continue questioning the global inequality once this illness is minimised or eradicated from developed nations? Will we continue to philosophise once our precious private hospitals have all the resources to take care of us, resources that are inaccessible by the poor? Will we?

(The author is an editorial and development consultant)