Bengal’s public healthcare needs to be rescued from apathy

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government presented before the nation what is arguably the most ambitious public healthcare programme in the world. The National Health Protection Scheme, dubbed as ‘Modicare’, when implemented in full, will serve more than 50 crore Indians from financially vulnerable households. The scope of the project is awe-inspiring because of its audacity to serve the number of recipients, which is larger than the combined population of the US, UK, France, and Germany.

Even though the rest of the world might be in awe, Modi’s detractors at home, however, have decided not to hail it as a step in the right direction. Topping that list is Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, who probably is the most vocal critic of the Prime Minister and his policies. A section of the political backrooms had expected the opposition parties to lend support to ‘Modicare’ in the spirit of legislative cooperation and nation-building but these angles seem to have been overshadowed by petty political differences.

Mamata, who hardly ever leaves a chance to prove her firebrand nature, was the first one to denounce ‘Modicare’. She unequivocally announced that her state, West Bengal, will not implement the mission, since her government has already made hospitalisation and medical treatment free for its citizens, enrolling till date more than 50 lakh people under its Swasthya Sathi programme. Even as she opted out of the scheme, which plans to provide annual health insurance cover of Rs 5 lakh to 10 crore poor households, a lot remains to be said about the state of public healthcare in Bengal. Going by cold statistics, the state of healthcare in Bengal seems more like a disease-ridden organism, gasping for breath.

When calculated on the basis of indicators such as birth rate, infant mortality rate, neonatal mortality rate and maternal mortality ratio, West Bengal not only falls on the wrong side of the ‘National Average’ column, it also lags behind states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Kerala. Statistics provided by globally-reputed organisations and research bodies like the Springer Institute and the International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE), find the public healthcare system in the state rather dismal. There is a good chance that Mamata would lash out at these reputable institutes for being Modi acolytes but none of these are remotely connected to the Prime Minister.

If the Springer Institute pointed out wide gaps between the state government’s claims and the ground realities in its latest report, ‘The Current Indian Healthcare System and West Bengal’s Health Status 2018’, IISTE corroborated similar findings in an extensive study. According to the IISTE study, West Bengal is “at the crossroads in the field of health-care delivery system”. Judging the state on the three significant parameters of nutrition, healthcare and education, the study found that the state has achieved somewhat uneven results over the last three decades. Conducted in 2012, a year after Mamata came to power, the study stressed on an urgent need to strengthen delivery of all rural and urban health-care programmes.

And just as IISTE had predicted, West Bengal failed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 and continues to trail behind in meeting the said goals. Even though Mamata’s Trinamool Congress has often screamed itself hoarse claiming how much it has done to initiate positive change in Bengal, scenes at state-run hospitals remain chaotic at best. And that is an observation leaving out the dismal condition of primary healthcare centres in far-flung villages. In the near-seven years that Mamata has been in power, the medical college hospitals, including ones in Kolkata, had huge gates erected, along with a coat of the now-ubiquitous blue and white paint.

The shiny gates, emblazoned with the name of the respective hospital, have only made the contrast inside starker; shortage of doctors and nursing staff, patients lying between two cots at the general wards, dogs and cats having a field day, and touts claiming more pounds of flesh than a reconstructive surgery. Almost all these hospitals now have low-cost medicine stores inside but most available drugs are barely of use and often of shockingly poor quality. Despite Mamata imposing a new law on errant private healthcare players in the state, virtually curbing their negotiation capabilities, it has hardly made a difference to the general public’s quest for better healthcare.

“Healthcare is not a 100-metre dash but more of a marathon towards excellence. If the Left ran in the direction opposite to the other runners during its three-decade stay, the new government hasn’t yet taken off. They feel everything is alright because they are yet to do anything but if they feel going deaf to the starter’s gun is going to help, then they must be looking for different trophies,” a professor from a leading state-run medical college hospital in Kolkata succinctly suggested.

The author is a senior journalist based in Kolkata