Future of Indian healthcare sector – boom or booby trap?

How will our healthcare sector be in 2050? Let us imagine. Present trends and happenings forecast what is in store for us in the future. There will be lakhs of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and lab technologists. Of course, we will have surplus medicines manufactured in India to treat our population in 2050. That's all? What about the quality of the service? Shall we scan?

Global scenario
In western countries more and more electronic equipment and machines like Robots and AI operated instruments will be available in 2050. Diagnosis will be easier and accurate. Drugs will be patient specific, site specific and costlier. More comfortable and sophisticated hospitals may be established. All the above will increase the cost of treatment and hospitalization by many folds. Now scores of questions arise. Who will pay the bill for patients? Government? Insurance company? or the patient's family? The answer depends on the government we elect. Will the number of diseases increase or decrease? Or will the gene therapy developing now eliminate life threatening and lifestyle diseases? If so, what will happen to the Pharma Industry? Will they block gene therapy beyond a certain point, to survive, like the hearsay, petroleum industry blocked the introduction of cars running with water as fuel? All these are food for thought. You proceed in your leisure. Let us look at the local scenario. 

Indian scenario 
As hundreds of self-financing colleges in health sciences are opened now, no doubt, lakhs of health professionals will be available in 2050. But will they be up to the standards and skills? That is the biggest question because of the following reasons 

No professors 
Majority of self-financing (SF) colleges and Deemed Universities in health sciences do not have even a minimum number of professors and senior teachers. Especially in medical colleges the situation is worse, as senior doctors are not willing to work as teachers. A teacher's job requires continuous reading, understanding and explaining the theory and practical which needs a lot of time investment. It is easy to earn more money in private practice if that time is invested in it. Hence there are not enough teachers even in government colleges. For example, in all prestigious AIIMS hospitals there are more than one third vacancies as per an answer given in our Parliament. Did you know, the Karnataka government has once advertised an open end salary for medical college professors post by asking them how much salary they want. Have you ever heard of such an offer for any government post? The Karnataka government was in such a desperate situation! That apart, good, straight forward doctors are not willing to work in these greedy private hospitals and colleges due to pressure from management to adopt unethical practices like prescribing unwanted tests, medicines and even surgeries. I know few such doctors personally. Recently we heard angiography was performed on dozens of youngsters of 20, 25 years old in an Indian hospital without need. Knowing it all and also the presence of ghost teachers during inspections our government is permitting to open hundreds of private medical, pharmacy and nursing colleges till now!

No patients 
The next requirement for good medical education is patients, – clinical material – in the doctor's language. Sufficient number of out-patients and in-patients are not available in these self financing colleges. They manipulate the records and patients are only on paper! How can we expect expertise and experience from the students of these colleges? It is the same situation for pharmacy, nursing and Lab technology students. Nobody gets practical exposure! 

Morality and mentality 
As these self-financing colleges and universities are collecting lakhs of rupees as annual fee, only students from crorepati families are studying there. Majority of them are with low marks, low morale and low IQ. MBBS and Pharm. D students, particularly, have joined those courses just for prestige and prefix “Dr” in front of their names. As huge money comes, college managements are not bothered to correct or simply not able to correct them. As though these things are not enough, many self-financing colleges and universities indulge in malpractices in examinations and give degrees to whoever pays money. Otherwise how can we explain the admission of 200 to 250 students per branch of M. Pharm by a Tamil Nadu private university 15 years back when the norm is around 10 students per branch?

Nurses struggling with patient care, pharmacists ignorant about most of the drugs they dispense, lab technologists manipulating test results, commission, corruption and confusion in lab tests, pharmaceutical marketing, insurance claims and all add insult to injury. CBI raids unearthing crores of rupees and hundreds of kilograms of gold from the premises of those responsible for giving approval for these colleges are reported frequently in the Media. Even after seeing and hearing all this, will you trust the professionals coming out of these colleges approved by them?

Let down by NMC
Okay, if you have decided to go to doctors educated in govt college, then you need to identify them. If you want to check the credentials of doctors in the National Medical register, alas! it is not at all maintained properly. Even after five years of its constitution, the National Medical Commission has not verified the credentials of doctors in its register, only a few hundred credentials have been verified so far out of 13 lakhs plus doctors practicing in India. Do you think there is no motive behind it?

Ultimate result 
Think about the practice by all the above health professionals in 2050. Will you go to them to get treatment? How can we expect better health care in 2050?  Some of us may not be alive to watch the scenario but think about our children and grandchildren. What type of society are we going to leave to them? Health care is not a subject to ignore as it deals with life and death. Is there anything more important than that? Booby traps being laid now in front of you, if you step on, sure to take away your legs at least, if not life, will you ignore them? I think ignoring it will be a sin even God will not forgive. Warning is our duty, listening or ignoring it is your choice! 

What is the remedy?
The solution lies in removing and not leaving the health care sector to private people. As you know that is a vital and core sector allowing money minded, profit seeking people in it is utter foolishness. Remember there cannot be grass eating tigers! One who invests crores of rupees will expect profit in lakhs at least, by any means. Simple economics! Even the strongest capitalist countries do not allow private people in basic health care and education sectors. We are copying them for everything from fashion, entertainment, food, travel to consumer goods. Why not in the important health care sector?