generalspeaking

Survival of the Desperate

India with its vast population, second only to that of China, is the world's largest democracy. It is a country comprised of people from various religious, ethnic and traditional backgrounds, primarily Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. Its teeming cities are booming, and its slums remain a slur on the human condition. Through its energetic entrepreneurial human skills the country is emerging as an economic and technological giant, and greater numbers of Indians are joining the middle class.

Still leaving hundreds of millions of uneducated and rural people living under the poverty line, subsisting on little food, inadequate health and medical facilities, and desperately poor living conditions altogether where hygiene and protection from the environment are almost non-existent. Disease is rife, and because so many of the indigent are malnourished or exposed to deadly pathogens, life can be distressingly short and brutal.

Political corruption is rife, and although the government has instituted its legal agenda to abolish the traditional caste system and traditions revolving around child brides and abandoned widows, the population remains mired in traditions that won't budge toward humanitarian empathy. Tribal and caste resentments remain vibrantly alive, and violence can erupt without notice. Hindus target Sikhs, Muslims and Christians, and Muslims reciprocate in kind.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the plight of the ill and the diseased, from young children with cancer, to elderly women with debilitating diseases which remain untreated due to a lack of funding to pay for their care. In Mumbai alone, home to over half of India's 52 billionaires, hundreds of indigent patients at a time live on the sidewalk surrounding a state-of-the-art charitable hospital, hoping to be seen, diagnosed and helped.

Through general rising prosperity on the Indian scale, longer life expectancy has brought growing health problems related to aging. Cancer rates are increasing exponentially. Wealthy patients and foreign medical tourists have access to specialized hospitals. These are hospitals catering to those who can pay, through privatizing of health-care resources.

As in the private, medical-health system in the United States, health professionals are concerned with their personal bottom line. Charitable institutions are well staffed by capable professionals, but they are overwhelmed by the inordinate burden of the numbers desperate for help. Prescriptions for health-ameliorating drugs are costly, and charitable organizations try to stem the tide of despair.

Health care presents as the country's second-largest source of debt among the poor in India after dowry, wedding and other social obligations in rural areas. Insufficient numbers of public clinics drive people to less expensive but unlicensed practitioners or natural healers, whose quackery does nothing to alleviate peoples' pain and distress.

"Everyone gets treated, but those with money get treated faster, which can make the difference between life and death", commented the husband of a stomach cancer victim, waiting, living on the street outside the public hospital where they sleep under tarps and blankets, suffering in the rainy season from voracious mosquitoes bringing malaria.

Labels: Health, Human Rights, India

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, January 13, 2010