| ashu |
Posted
on 18-Aug-00 11:15 PM
(What follows is a piece of satire. This was
published in The Kathmandu Post late last year.)
Diagnosing doctors
By M. Singh & Bhupendra Rawat
Doctors and long-distance bus drivers have something in common in Nepal. Both are responsible for other people’s lives.
Yet, as our media point out, both often fail in their duty. Just as our highways are
littered with squashed men, women and children for whom the light at the end of the tunnel was that of an oncoming bus they failed to dodge, our hospital cabins and nursing home-rooms are filled with patients, knocking on Heaven’s door — overmedicated, over-ignored and overcharged.
If you want to learn more about long-distance bus drivers, hitch a ride on the rattling Sajha Bus to Tulsipur, Dang. If you want to get the inside dope - no, not THAT dope, silly — on Nepali doctors, read on.
Dr SIGNBOARD-ONLY: This medico is more interested in keeping his degree-studded, Shyam-Arts-painted brown signboard outside his clinic cleaner than your lungs. More a salesman than a doctor, he knows how to
fudge a routine, ordinary and even necessary two-week-long clinical training in Calcutta as an impressive-sounding degree on his beloved brown signboard.
When you visit him, just watch him: He has absolutely no idea what in Nepal is wrong with you. Yet, in a serious voice, he intones that you take Cetamol twice a day, each time with a glass of mineral water.
And ladies, don’t ever let him squeeze your breasts just because he seems a little too eager to cure your headache! How this guy exists as a medical doctor in Nepal says much about our Nepal Medical Association and the Nepal Medical Council, and the dirty politics in which they are enmeshed.
Dr ALL-in-ONE: This Nepali doctor acts as though he were the direct descendant of Mr Hippocrates himself. He thinks he knows all about medicine and he wants you to know that he knows all about medicine.
Even in casual conversations, he makes references both to the New England Journal
of Medicine and Kamana magazine. That is why, the word "referral" is foreign to him, In fact, he’d rather kill you than send you over to someone more qualified.
This guy, being Dr All-in-one, practices all kinds of medicines. On Sundays, he deals with mortals like you and us. On Mondays, he operates on your newly-rich neighbour’s Alsatian dog. And he spends the rest of the week, peddling cod-liver oil from his wife-managed drugstore. And oh! In between, he has plenty of time, not to mention cash, to rush his relatives to Delhi or Vellore, even if they have as much as a sneezing problem.
Dr NO SOURCE FORCE: Remember that wide-eyed, bushy-tailed ISc classmate from Bayarban, Morang who drove you nuts with his tapai ka tapai salutation and oh-so-formal spoken Nepali in college in Nepal?
Well, guess what. He wiped his nose clean, worked hard, studied medicine on a Plan scholarship, and has now become a human football - kicked around by the Ministry of Health. Since this doctor, then as now, lacks connections that matter, bureaucrats keep on transferring him from one remote zilla to another, ordering him to fill in the "rural service quota" for yet another slick Kathmandu medical boy who enjoys the benefits of his Papa’s right connections.
Yet, our No ‘Source Force’ hero uncomplainingly bears the burden — like mighty Hercules holding the Atlas, dreaming of those juicy government scholarships to Edinburgh, Dublin or Dhaka. But, alas, those
never arrive, leaving our daktar-shaheb to spend his working days in Khalanga, Jajarkot - playing cards all day with the peons, stealing chuskis of banned raksi, and being reduced to massaging the broken jaws of the Maobadis.
Dr NO ETHICS: There exist at least three variants of this mutant medico species in our beloved Nepal.
The first variant worships money. To that end, he’s always ready to make arbitrary diagnosis, go for unjustifiably expensive procedures, and prescribe back-breaking nostrum which he wants you to buy at the drugstore of which he is a shareholder, if not the owner. He pockets commissions from pathology labs and much else besides.
The second variant, though officially an employee at a state hospital, will only see you at his private clinic, where, up on a wall-papered panel, hangs his license to kill. Always busy, he treats you as though you were a Hero Honda motorcycle, whirring over to him for a quick tune-up. "Roll on, roll on", he seems to say, "and hand over the money to my brother-in-law outside."
And the third variant practices medicine by becoming skilled at politics - both local and national. Acting as advisors to political parties, he, together with his comrades and jai nepal friends, tears medical fraternities apart — choosing to operate on all only with (choose one) Congressi or RPP or Marxist or Maoist knife.
Ah, such and more are the hidden tales from our medical land. At least, our long-distance
bus driver hasn’t made us swim out of the Trishuli yet! THE END.
(M. Singh is a medical professional from Nepal currently based in Boston. Bhupendra Rawat is the name Ashutosh Tiwari uses, with full prior knowledge of Kathmansu's editors, to occasionally publish satires/humor and offbeat pieces in Nepal's media).
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