Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Self-care and justice for doctors' that was published in Newsband

Self-care and justice for doctors

Self-care interventions should become freely available in India. Self-care mostly happens outside the formal health system. There is deluge of new diagnostics, devices and drugs. With the ability to prevent disease, maintain health and cope with illness and disability with or without reliance on health-care workers, self-care interventions are gaining more importance.

Over 400 million across the world already lack access to essential health services and there will be a shortage of about 13 million health-care workers by 2035. Here self-help becomes the primary, timely and reliable form of care. Hence the World Health Organisation recognises self-care interventions as a means to expand access to health services and for prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases.

Home-based pregnancy testing is the most commonly used self-help diagnostics in this area in India.

At rural levels, girls with plus two level schooling might be given a simple training to deal with ordinary body issues involving ladies. They might be allowed as subsidiary to primary health centers. Likewise, boys might be engaged for gents' common illnesses. Thus, risks of faulty self-help could be avoided.

Talking about health care, there should be a law to protect doctors too. The attack on a junior doctor in West Bengal on June 10 over the death of a patient had sparked the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country. Such violence is invariably the result of systemic problems that adversely affect optimal attention to patients, such as infrastructural and manpower constraints. It is apparent that doctors work in stressful environments, sometimes under political pressure with regard to admissions. Several States have enacted laws to protect doctors and other health-care personnel from violence.

There is need in improving health infrastructure, counselling patients about possible adverse treatment outcomes, and providing basic security in medical institutions.

Medical care is a service. A service cannot be rendered perfectly unless the beneficiary too shows some restraints. We find faults on both sides. Absence of self-discipline is what one discerns in service delivery in hospitals these days. When it comes to the healthcare it is necessary for the patient to keep trust in the doctor, but at the same time the doctor shouldn't break the faith and trust of the patients.

Doctor's lives are important but the manner in which they are saving others’ lives is also important. The reason for the violence against doctors is due to the negligence shown towards the patients and their dignity of life especially in government hospitals. Doctors must realize that if they stop playing with the lives of others only then can violence wreaked against doctors be stopped. Doctors need to respect the dignity of the lives of patients only then can they expect peace and dignity in return.

The law and order has to check both the sides not merely for equality but for the justice as well. It is not an unknown fact that the doctors have turned into businessman and hospitals minting machines. When doctors delay the treatment or provide wrong treatment, the outcome as expected could be like this only. Due to pathetic conditions of the entire system, no doctor is held responsible for the loss of the patient. Doctors would treat a patient as one of the many patients but that person could be the world for someone else which must be taken into consideration.

Where is the data for the deaths of the patients who could have been cured had they taken enough precautions, deaths caused by wrong prescriptions, delayed and wrong surgeries etc.?