Consumers swamped by plague

The government failure works against consumers, says Osama Manzar
AFTER 28 years of its last outbreak in 1966 the hazard of plague has once again, If could not show its own strength to destroy the human life, certainly exposed the whole system of government machinery, its inability to tackle a sudden disaster and the total inability to provide oven the weakest shield to protect consumers rights, especially the charter of patients’ rights under Consumer Protection Act (CPA). Where, a consumer has a right to health care and humane treatment, give con sent, information, adequate prescribing information and health education. Once again, during this epidemic the consumers have been cheated in every sphere.
The consumers’ rights are, directly proportional to the failure of government systems. Reacts HD Shourie, the director of Common Cause, “I had never dreamt that in India we could still open to an epidemic of the nature of Plague. Why things were allowed to deteriorate to the extent that a disease of this nature could happen. hanged my head in shame from the very first day of the current disaster.”
Based on a report of a local newspaper, a post graduate student of Jawaharlal Nehru University comments, “Does a patient who is already suffering from plague has any right to suffer, in addition, from the inefficiency of doctors, absence of proper conditionings, and then the wrong diagnosis, delay in pathological checkings and at times total no availability of the basic provisions, like ambulance, when a patient, for instance, had to be transferred from All India Institute of Medical Sciences to IDH (infections Disease Hospital).”
The government’s responsibility is to protect consumers but she has-been failed and the
consumers were left afraid, not once or twice but many times. Recently there was a conjunctivitis epidemic but no body even bothered. Besides, thousands of people died of inevitable cholera, meningitis and Kala-zar,” adds Debar Banerji, Professor Emeritus, Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU. True, if one goes by the number of deaths, then the biggest culprit is our health care system and not the terrorists in Kashmir and Punjab.
According to Dr Unnikrishnan of the Voluntary Health Association of India, “As a consumer of the health care facilities, both private and public health sector have failed the people in this plague epidemic. While the first one totally negated to provide care to the plague victims, the other responded very late and delayed the services.”
It clearly points out that a consumer cannot totally rely upon private health care system and that the government and public has no control over private clinics and hospitals. “This further strengthens the suggestion that every effort has to be put to make public health care system strong, in this country,” says Dr Unnikrishnan.
However, In the meanwhile, the consumers and the general mass have been thoroughly
cheated from all the corners. While many pharmaceuticals shops ran out of stock of the
recommended abortive antibiotic Tetracycline, many. shops were found selling the antibiotics for Rs.10 each capsule.
Twenty-six year old Delia Singh’s case is interesting, he narrates, “I went to a pharmacy shop in Munirka market to buy Tetracycline and amazingly it was being sold for Rs.10 per capsule.” Mr. Singh gave away the idea of buying and informed his relatives in Bihar to send this antibiotic in ample. That is not all, almost all the tailoring shops in Munirka are busy sewing cotton masks. “And the fact that people are buying it without caring that these masks are not the medicated masks,” said a consumer, buying Phosphorus-30 from a homeopathic medicine shops in Munirka.
Phosphorus-30 has its own controversy of being a preventive plague medicine, hereas,
the homeopath experts are saying that there is nothing like preventive medicine in homeopathy. Yet, the lady shopkeeper in a homeo shop in Kailash Colony says, “If you supplement Phosphorous-30 with Aconite-6, it is a perfect preventive.”
Amidst the disaster, confusion and panic camouflaged the doctors and the people simultaneously. And the 1anic is always caused by two reasons. Either out of ignorance or due to the loss of faith In the system. In this epidemic both occurred. There is no denying the fact that oven after four- five days the doctors did not know what to do with patients. Agreeing to the fact, Dr. AK Mukherjee, Director General of Health Services, confessed, “I would believe that initially there were confusion among many of us.”
The doctors negligence and lack of responsibility echoed even abroad. In one of its editorial the New York Times said that many workers and other health workers fled from Surat rather than stay and fight the epidemic Dr. Mukherjee also accepted the fact that initially tile responses were disappointingly slow and sluggish. He said, “I should not blame it only to the media for creating panic and confusion. but we are also responsible for not providing appropriate information to the media.”
Though no medicine in a total preventive medicine, still Tetracycline and phosphorous 30 have been sold once and for all. So much so, that a drug company in Faridabad, whose turn over is Rs.3.84 crore, have got an order of Rs.1.25 crore of Tetracycline from the government. And the company expecting more orders from Army department. Says Dr Ashok Rattan, a microbiologist from AIIMS, “The information of taking the medicines only in the case of suspicion, was never held back but some how it did not reach properly to the general mass. As a result many people started taking antibiotics as a preventive too.”
Adds Dr KK Dutta, Director, National Institute of Communicable Disease, “All the additional preventive measures, such as musks, avoid crowd and public places, etc., were recommended for the psychological satisfaction of the people. Ironically, the Epidemic Act says that, “the government is sup posed to act in such a way that people do not behave erratically.”
A lot of confusion arose due to the severe lack of coordination among various institutes, hospitals and health ministry like: AIIMS, NICD, IDH and DGHS. Reveals a professor in AIIMS, on the condition of anonymity, “I must confess that unless we overcome our own confusion we cannot provide proper awareness to people. For instance in this epidemic, NICD has not at all coordinating with us.”
A serious lack of coordination between the Union health Secretary Ms. Dayal and the Delhi Health Minister harsh Vardhan was evident from the varying figures on plague cases in Delhi supplied to reporters.