Name of the Disease

Last Friday there was a screening of a documentary made jointly by MIT and Udaipur Health Project, namely "Name of the disease". This documetary was based on a survey made by the above body in the rural areas around Udaipur, gauging the general awareness towards the medical facilities nearby or in the town.

There are mainly three bodies covering the medical needs in these areas. Namely, Bhopas, Bengali Doctors and government centers. Bhopa is an illiterate, generally a guardian of some temple. He falls in the same category as "tantrik", who by using some unreasonable techniques like Jhaadu to beat the patient to remove the bhoot infection, portray their connection with the god. Bengali Doctors are those, who couldn't hold their jobs as compounder(helper to the doctor) in some dispensary, settled here as a doctor. When interviewed such a case, the answer was " pataa nahi, main to 12th pass nahi kar paya, is liye doctor ban gaya"( I don't know all this, I couldn't clear my 12th exam (H.S.C.), so I became a doctor). There are appointments of the regular doctors from the government, with well equipped labs and medical centers, which 5 days a week are closed, for some fishy reason.

90 % of the medical cases are referred to the Bhopas, which people have the most belief in. In case of no cure (and provided the patient survives), in the rest 10% of cases people go to the bengali doctors: for there is no option most of the time. The natives believe in the saline bottles more than any other method and always demand for so (even in the case of simple cold or throat infection), which is not supported many a times at the medical centers. This is another reason for the affection towards the bengali docs.

Moral of the story is quite clear. Literate the people. Remove those Bhopas. Remove those Bengali Doctors. Keep the medical centers open 24x7. Simple......but then the question comes, how? and who? I am a sane researcher, so I am saved. The other is an engineer, safe either. My family doctor is quite busy, out of question!

What is the name of the disease, in which there is a co-existence of a super-saturated density of professionals in the metros and scarcity in the rural areas of India? what is the name of the disease, in which the highly literate gang of India, sits in front of the idiot box early morning to know their daily fate? What is the name of the disease, in which the cream of intelligentsia, the so called researchers, improve their quality with a perl on a ring in their index finger? What is the name of the disease, due to which we have forgotten that we are falling short of our social expectations?

The Bhopas, the Bengali Doctors are all doing their jobs, when are we going to start ours? Only literacy is not the solution. A scientific attitude is needed and that way we all are equally illiterate.

What is the name of this disease?