Cost of caring

The quote attributed to the country’s renowned Philosopher Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan that “Information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom” fits to a T in the matter of caring ourselves to be healthy in body and mind. Information relating to care, particularly the illnesses bugging the land’s masses, their underlying causes, measures to prevent their occurrence, consequences such as loss of valuable lives hurting the affected families, paucity of infrastructure in the country’s healthcare sector and so on is being widely publicised by the media. Knowledge of means and ways of treating as well as curing the diseases, facilities and services of medical practitioners, connect between health and food habits as well as hygiene, cost of medicines and hospitalisation, hardship that comes in the wake of neglecting the importance of keeping good health and so on is as clear as daylight. However, wellness is more talked and written about than bestowed wisdom on the part of the land’s people at large, including the literati as well as the cognoscenti.

India’s pharmaceutical industry is booming to the extent of earning the distinction as the world’s pharmacy. The country also has the dubious distinction of producing nearly one-third of the world’s spurious drugs and hosting quack practitioners of medicine in large numbers, thanks to the people’s gullibility, particularly the urban poor and the rural population. The low ratio of qualified medical practitioners to the country’s population, at one-tenth of World Health Organisation’s norm, is another factor hurting the country’s healthcare sector.

India is producing vaccines administered to both human population and livestock in the country as major source for the entire world. Vaccination programmes are also launched regularly in the country leaving a small fraction of the land’s masses uncovered in the annual programmes. The nation’s slums, reportedly hosting nearly one-fourth of its total headcount, are in august company of overpopulated urban spaces, such as the five mega cities including Bengaluru where many major diseases such as Tuberculosis and Malaria originate and spread. In this backdrop, primary healthcare measures built upon facilities and services play a major role in the country’s caring sector.

Given the costs of life-saving medicines, availing services of specialists and hospitalisation, affordable to not more than about five per cent of the country’s diaspora, empowering primary care practitioners, namely GPs (General Practitioners) merits support of the State and society in order to rein in the cost of caring.