Let's pause before shrieking out

BY Shantanu Datta| IN Media Practice | 14/07/2012

It was post-dinner on Tuesday night, and I was watching television like a good, tax-paying citizen. The midnight repeat of Arnab Goswami’s Newshour, to be precise. Life seemed quite peaceful and the world in perfect order when I was suddenly thrown off the bed with a jolt. Yes, I am exaggerating; and no, I am not exaggerating all the way. A jolt I sure received as Goswami launched one of his famous harangues. This time, ward boys administering minor treatment (he kept calling it “surgical procedures”, though I didn’t sight anyone with a scalpel or donning a surgical mask, but that’s beside the point) at a district hospital in Bulandshahr.

Goswami was shocked, stunned even, as he nearly fell off the chair with an equally great jolt (okay, I am embellishing again). How could we let this carry on, he asked. How could we let this “chalta hai” attitude go on, he asked, again. The nation, he said, nay thundered, wonders what treatment will set right this “chalta hai” attitude.

Never in my life have I heard the words chalta and hai punched in as many times in so few minutes.

It is no one’s contention that non-medical staff should administer any serious treatment at a medical facility. It shouldn’t be done, yes. But is it not done?

While Dr. Shishir Kumar, chief medical superintendent (CMS) of Babu Banarasi Das District Hospital, Bulandshahr, told Goswami that the said ward boy had worked in the operation theatre (OT) for nearly a decade — he in fact called him an “OT aide” — and both Madhu Kishwar, from the Centre for Study of Developing Societies, and Indian medical Association’s Dr. Rai kept reiterating that it was an emergency, did Goswami even pause to comprehend what they were saying? No sir.

When one of his panelists, a doctor from RML Hospital, said he had seen non-medical staff carry out ECG in the United States, our man gave it back to the good doctor: Are you supporting quackery?

Unfortunately, it’s not a problem limited only to one show or one anchor. This George Bush-esque attitude is spreading like a communicable disease in Indian media: you are either with us, or you are damned.

The following night, Wednesday, Goswami ostensibly didn’t want to take  any chances by getting in a medical expert. He filled the screen with lawyers, social activists, and Kushboo, an actor-turned-politician.

Well, I was a trifle more shocked this time: I was shocked that people find it shocking to hear of class-IV staff administering minor treatment at district hospitals in remote areas of the country.

If Tuesday night was agonizing, Wednesday night was triply tormenting, as even the guests started using that phrase: chalta hai.

And if you thought the shock and awe stopped with talk TV, I am sure you skipped the newspapers the following morning.

But here’s why I am shocked at their shock (and let me repeat — I am not condoning the act per se, but just stating that reality and exigencies, sometimes, dictate action):

The men caught on camera performing those “surgical procedures” were giving an injection and doing stitches on an accident-victim’s legs. You don’t have to go to Bulandshahr, sirs and madams, come to Vaishali, Ghaziabad, next door to Delhi, and I will take you to hospitals where even my family, I, and many people I know go regularly and get injections and small medical procedures done from non-medical hands. It’s not unsafe, let me assure you.

There is no point repeating 23 times that the Bulandshahr district hospital has 23 doctors on its rolls. As the chief medical officer said, only one was on duty at that early hour (7 a.m.): it was an emergency-like situation following back-to-back accidents and they had to cater to more than two dozen victims, Dr. Kumar said. Now, all 23 doctors won’t be on duty at the same time, right? And have we tried to find out when that video footage was clicked, and whether any other doctor trooped in on being informed about the mishaps?

What, pray, is talk TV’s solution to this particular problem? That the patients should have been left to their fate till more medical help arrived? Has any journalist — either TV or print — tried to find out the fate of that patient, or any of the others who received treatment from the “quack”, in Goswami’s words, that day?

In fact, let’s get more general. Urging for more doctors, Dr. Shishir Kumar said his hospital lies on the highway and gets a large number of accident victims regularly. Why not do some “actual” investigative journalism and find out how many people have been affected by mistreatment at that hospital? That would be a tough but more worthy story to follow up, instead of marshalling all troops on the hospital premises to get inconsequential quotes/bites from the hospital staff.

Experienced OT hands are often better than junior doctors in carrying out small medication. I have known doctors (yes, experienced ones) whose injections have always left me with a swelling that hurt, and non-medical staff who push an injection better and do a healthier dressing.

As Madhu Kishwar said in the programme, how can we be sure in our comfort zone that even if a doctor treats us, he/she hadn’t bought the degree, and, as a corollary, knows much less than that ward boy who learnt the ropes over the years, ON THE WORK FLOOR? This comes in the same week that saw NDTV report a story, which we all know happens in our shocking, not shocked, land but still had to be told: “In Andhra Pradesh, you can get zero in an entrance exam but still get a place in the state's engineering colleges in the reserved quota. (Here’s link for the video: http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/india-decides-9/score-a-zero-become-an-engineer-in-andhra-pradesh/238866)

And why address the rot in only government hospitals? Are their private counterparts epitomes of virtue? Aside from overcharging, which I would still call a lesser evil, consumer courts and forums are replete with complaints about wrong treatment, misdiagnosis, keeping patients on ventilators even after they turned into “bodies” (in crime reporter parlance), and refusing to release bodies for nonpayment, to give only a few examples. Why does corporate media act like Tarzan, letting out victory yelps after hitting everyone’s whipping boy, and evoke all journalistic responsibilities and need for restraint while dealing with private entities?

Recall how any strike by pilots or other staff of any airline, most times over nonpayment of salaries/dues, is always met with standard stats: crores lost due to non-operations, harassment faced by public, and, the most amusing, India’s image taking a beating. How about Vijay Mallya carrying on with his jet-set lifestyle, or the Air India management allegedly giving preferential treatment to a certain section of pilots, or, in whichever case, managements bungling up big time, somewhere, leading to nonpayment? Does India’s image remain bedecked in soft-focus photography then?

When people say such aspects are a reality in the “other” India, please understand it’s not a chalta hai attitude, but realisation of a fact and the need to address the crux of the issue. As the hospital chief medic asked in Goswami’s programme, why are more doctors not sent to such district hospitals? Because most MBBS and those more qualified eye a cushy job in cities. To address the core of the issue, the purportedly vigilante media should zoom in on those fresh grads, and spark off public outcry at most of them turning down “district postings”. Not take on people and areas that are trying to cope with whatever little they have at their disposal.

PS: The Uttar Pradesh administration on Thursday morning transferred Dr. Shishir Kumar, CMS of Babu Banarasi Das District Hospital in Bulandshahr, and suspended the ward boy, Mohammad Ayub, who was caught on camera giving an injection and doing stitches.
Do they, especially the ward boy, deserve it?

Perhaps just as much as the two bright journalists who replaced Arnab Goswami last week on Newshour, when he had apparently gone on leave, and made a joke of themselves in their desperate attempt to ape the Real McCoy. That’s a personal dig, and I apologise, but sometimes that’s the only recourse left to talk sense.

For the poor ward boy, it is justice to the extent that a desk hand gets the sack for a wrong story on the front page of a newspaper, when under the PRB Act an editor much higher in the echelon took the decision.

By the way, a poll on firstpost.com, which asked whether “The ward boys who stitched patients' wounds in UP should be felicitated, not punished”, had 66 per cent (2,305 votes) in favour, and 34 per cent (1,204 votes) against.

A confession: one of those 2,305 votes was mine.