An ignoble trade

The orthopaedic hospital caters to the needs of accident victims, many of whom need emergency operation. But the facilities available at the hospital, which has only 10 operation theatres, are inadequate. And brokers are exploiting the situation by setting up their business of luring patients away. The victims are not left with much choice when they are in desperate need of surgical intervention. But the brokers could not perhaps run such a business without developing a nexus with insiders. There is no doubt that some of the hospital staff also get their share of the money pocketed from the patients and their relatives by the brokers. It is yet another example of how the gullible are being fleeced in a government-run hospital.

It is basically a reflection of poor management that such rackets can operate under the very nose of authorities. We want the hospital management to go into the whole affair and take punitive action against the recalcitrant among the employees. They have to dismantle the whole network and order the unwanted elements out of the hospital premises.

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Patients and their relatives may be facing a more or less similar situation in many other public hospitals in the country. Most of them fail to cope with the heavy rush of patients due to a host of reasons, ranging from lack of facilities and equipment to shortage of doctors, so middlemen can have a field-day. These people are not only causing harm to patients, but are also turning the hospitals into a hot-bed of undesirable activity. The health authorities should reassess the situation as the number of people seeking emergency medical attention has increased sharply. We do need expansion of hospital equipment base and space, but unless we have freed the facilities of people who trade in human miseries, all that a physical increase in the infrastructure will mean is stepped up patient exploitation.