Hospitals without drugs

We are also told that remedial measures are well under way as the parliamentary standing committee on the health ministry is now looking into the matter. The ministry has been asked to ensure supply of medicines to the hospitals concerned.

The committee has decided to address a problem that should not have been allowed to linger on for long six months, in the first place. Patients seeking treatment in those hospitals usually belong to poorer sections of society who cannot always procure medicines on their own. And why should they? After all, the public sector hospitals are there to meet people's requirements.

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The possibility of the medicine supply system collapsing cannot be ruled out, particularly because we do not yet have a very organised and efficient procurement and distribution network. That said, that a technical hitch has been allowed to create such a crisis sounds like total lack of sensitivity to a public cause.

The World Bank has been blamed for the hitch. We do not yet know how far that is true, but nothing can alter the plain truth that the health planners failed miserably to handle a matter that had such great bearing on public health. It's a failure that cannot be covered up, even when a highly plausible theory explaining its cause is available.

The planners have clearly failed to attach due importance to the issue. Else, they would have looked for other ways of resolving the crisis. That they have been waiting for things to take shape on their own is self- explanatory, though not acceptable.

We hope the men at the helm would realise that public health has been given a raw deal and the only option open to them is to restore supply of medicines to the hospitals immediately. Technical hitches and bureaucratic tangles are not the best of excuses when supply of medicines is stopped.