Health care is very important need for mankind. I still remember my mother saying some very strange words like,” aale mati kole mati sutarache haath dande ghal kombda tujha phako ani maze dukho!” Now what it meant was that you get well and let all your troubles come to me. I felt alright immediately. Her magical words created wellness in me. How did that happen?
Mothers are very loving and they don’t want you to fall sick or get hurt and if you do so they help you get over it by some such old wives tales.
Our old GP or General Physicians were like those mothers too. When you went to their dispensary they would welcome you with funny words. They will sit you down and ask about your family and friends. Tell you about something’s happening around your village or city. Keeping you engrossed in some small talk they would examine you. The stethoscope probing your body, asking you to open your mouth wide, shining the torch in there and asking you to pull out your tongue, they continued with their examination.
They would end up giving you colored pills or giving you a jab. You would go back happily after that. Knowing fully well that you are getting better the moment they touched you. You loved going to them once a while with the silliest of your sicknesses. Even a simple cough or cold was sufficient to drive you there. You loved talking to their assistants or as they were called earlier- ‘compounders’. These women or men knew everything about you. They knew when you had come the last time and what was wrong with you. They knew the dirty scrawls of the doctor and could crack even the most complex hieroglyphs on the sheet of their prescriptions. They advised you the dosages and made those marked bottles and poured colored liquid in them and exhorted you to have it before or after meals.
Today, my back was hurting and I had fever. I took some simple medicine for fever but my back continued to ache. So I asked to be put some pain medicine or balm. I was sprayed from far by a cold spray and that was the end of it. The warm feeling of the cold capsicum spray penetrated the skin and that was the end of it all. There was no warmth in it at all. It was too distant.
The world today has become cold and cynical. The doctors are difficult to find. You have to take prior appointment with them. Their assistants handle you and treat you like money making machines who have come to oil themselves. You can never jump the queue even if you think you are his pet patient. You are no longer the patient but another one of those pests who come to disturb him. It is cold and loveless treatment for you. They look you up in their computers and have no idea who you are personally. They never ask you about your family or friends, unless and until you have a debilitating disease which can be hereditary. They ask you to perform more and more tests for very personal reasons. More so to cover their asses. If they were to tell you some wrong treatment and you would later sue them for it. They want to push the onus on to someone else and not on themselves to cure you. Hippocrates would be turning in his grave after seeing what has happened to his teachings.
The coldness which has come in treatment of human beings today and the utter callousness associated with health care brings us to a point of having the aspect of love and compassion reintroduced in these professions. Remember the care taken by Florence Nightingale and Mother Theresa in curing the sick? They were real humanitarians and loving people. The human touch is very important.
Care for the sick and downtrodden, poor and have-nots, homeless and dying, helpless and distraught is extremely important. They are all looking up at those who can offer it without expectations.
Compassion and charity has to be offered without any expectations or desires of a return. These are not gifts with a return gift attached to it. Give with a clear heart. Give it to those who cannot return back the favors. Give with love and caring. Even the large pharmaceutical companies have become only blood sucking businesses. They have to serve humanity and not look at profits alone. Medicines and other related services should be easily available and everyone should be entitled to it irrespective of their position in society. Loving service to mankind is the only way of reaching God. Be kind and compassionate to fellow humans. Love is the only path to attaining God.
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