We pointed out even last year when the government was busy proclaiming its adept handling of the spread of disease, that government health infrastructure was inadequate while the private sector had just abdicated its responsibility. Covid patients had to suffer because of this and non-Covid patients had to suffer because they were not a priority even though they were facing life-threatening situations. Now the situation is even worse. The health care system has collapsed. The Law Minister in Uttar Pradesh Brajesh Pathak has written a scathing letter to the responsible bureaucrat about the abysmal state of response of health care system to Covid emergency. When an influential minister of the ruling party feels helpless one can imagine the situation of ordinary mortals. King George’s Medical University and Balrampur hospitals in Lucknow have been converted into Covid hospitals which means patients with other ailments will be turned away causing them immense inconvenience. People go to hospitals only when there is an emergency. In normal times these major hospitals of Lucknow are already overcrowded. One wonders where all those patients will now go? Inspite of the government policy of advising people home isolation in case they test positive for Covid, currently there is scramble for beds. People are dying moving from one hospital to another unable to find a bed.
The Prime Minister trumpeted a so called Atmanirbhar Bharat abhiyan taking pride in the domestically produced Covishield vaccine based on Oxford-AstraZeneca research only to give in to the demand to import Russian vaccine when push came to shove. The Bhartiya Janata Party governments seem to continuously function in an event management mode. Yogi Adityanath, who got himself accolades for his handling the coronavirus crisis, has now himself tested Covid positive pointing to failure at three levels – the ineffectiveness of the much touted vaccination programme, which has miserably failed to vaccinate sufficient section of population, as he got himself inoculated days before, his ‘efficient’ health care system about which he once claimed that Kerala should learn from and maintenance of general vigil and observing precautions against the disease. It is believed that only if two thirds of a population is inoculated within a short duration of 8-10 months then herd immunity kicks in, however in the case of India we’ve hardly been able to vaccinate 1 to 2 crores of our population so far with both doses, which is almost one hundredth of what we need to do. And more importantly, speed of vaccination is appalling – India’s vaccination began on 16 January 2021, and it took us 3 months to give both doses to 1-2 crores. Time window is fast closing if we want to leverage public health benefits of herd immunity or save lives or reduce hospitalization needs by population level vaccination programme.
The government is woefully short of beds to accommodate all patients and is on a spree to acquire the capacity of private hospitals. We have always advocated for nationalization of health care system. The logic for it cannot be understood any better than in times of Covid crisis. The U.P. government has ignored the 2018 Allahabad High Court’s Justice Sudhir Agarwal and Justice Ajeet Kumar order that all receiving salaries from the government and their family members should get themselves treated at government health care facilities. Implementation of this order alone will make the government health care robust. However, even in the time of Covid crisis the government is guilty of promoting private interests. The Covaxin, the other vaccine being used in India so far, important initial part of research was done by National Institue of Virology which is a part of Indian Council of Medical Research and handed over to Bharat Biotech for further development. The vaccine has been rolled out without appropriate trial results, just so that we could claim to be ahead in the race to produce and export it.
A pertinent question is when the farmers are sitting on a protest for over three months demanding a legal right of Minimum Support Price of their produce, which is one and half times their cost of production, why have the vaccine manufacturers been allowed to mint unethical profit in the time of national calamity? It is important to remember that AstraZeneca/Oxford had promised not to earn any profit from the vaccine. Then why is its manufacturer selling vaccine to the government at variable prices? Covishield was bought by the government of India earlier at Rs 210 per dose, and recently it has been bought by our government at Rs 150. More interesting is that the vaccine which is entirely developed in India, Covaxin, costs even more to the government: Rs 295 per dose. Covishield manufacturer wanted to sell it at Rs 1000 per dose in private market though and mint even more profit but thankfully our government had put a maximum cap of Rs 250 per dose to be sold in private hospitals where Rs 150 goes to the manufacturer and Rs 100 is earned by the hospital. Let us not forget that the price of Covid test last year was so hard negotiated at maximum of Rs 4500 which has come down significantly since then. The question is, who determines the cost price, and who should be held to account for minting profits even when people reel under severe economic and humanitarian crises?
Dr Michael Ryan, who is the Executive Director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme, who also leads the team responsible for international containment and treatment of Covid-19, said last month that “We have set the seeds of our own destruction by not having universal access to high quality affordable healthcare as a minimum basic human right for every person on this planet. And we are paying a huge price now in a pandemic for the lack of that basic human right. The seeds of our pandemic destruction have been set in how we have developed and invested in healthcare- which is not very well and not very equitable.”
That India needs a better health care infrastructure couldn’t have been more obvious earlier. We need more public hospitals to handle a crisis like coronavirus pandemic. If BJP cares about the people rather than the politics espoused by Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh it should take decision to divert major part of Rs. 3,000 crores collected for building Ram temple in Ayodhya for building hospitals. Even the existing religious infrastructure should be taken over by government and converted into hospitals. If Gurudwaras can serve human beings by running a very efficient langar system, why can’t other religious institutions get involved in human service, rather than restricting themselves to worship of some abstract forms of God, by running hospitals from their premises. In fact, government policy should make it mandatory for religious institutions to be involved with some form of human service in providing food, health care, education or undertaking some welfare activity.
Dr Sandeep Pandey, Bobby Ramakant
(Dr Sandeep Pandey is a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee and national Vice President of Socialist Party (India). Bobby Ramakant is part of CNS, Asha Parivar and Socialist Party (India). Follow them on Twitter @Sandeep4Justice or @BobbyRamakant)
17 April 2021
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| The Kashmir Times, India (op-ed page, 27 April 2021) |
published in:
- CNS
- Deccan Herald, Bengaluru, India (op-ed page, 7 May 2021)
- The Kashmir Times, India (op-ed page, 27 April 2021)
- Counter Currents, Kerala, India
- Counter View
- Media Swaraj
- The Mainstream Weekly
