I was in a district headquarters, was visiting one local private hospital regularly. There I came to learn from a Registered Medical Practitioner (RMP) that they are paid for every patient that they would recommend to this hospital from the villages. Unnecessary Cesarian operations, removal of the uterus, medical tests are some of the common high commission factors.
The medical representatives sit in line with waiting patients. They are the teachers to a doctor, telling about the usefulness of the medicine and for what ailments the doctor should prescribe the medicine. Most importantly educates a doctor on the amount of commission paid for every unit of medicine sold. It is necessary for the doctors, as their educational institutions never taught how to convert learning to earning. This aspect is most interesting to a corrupt doctor. Annually they also offer them foreign visits. Out of self-interest, a doctor always writes more medicines than needed. I often request my doctor to be economical in prescribing the medicines - types of medicine, quantities and price of medicine. I also visit the generic medical store to buy basic medicines at a cheaper rate.
In many houses, the surplus medicines get accumulated in large numbers because a patient gets cured, but the surplus medicines prescribed by the doctor are still lying around. In the Mumbai city, many medical shop owners will not let you buy a few medicines say five tablets as prescribed by the doctor, instead, they sell a strip of 10 tablets which is illogical. The medical shop owner is another culprit in the system who gets an exorbitant commission.
The God of health ‘Apollo’ is least comfortable in this environment, where good health of people is a loss to many stakeholders in the system. The God of death ‘Yama’ seems to be happy, with these kinds of networks who bring in more business at the end.
The God of health ‘Apollo’ is least comfortable in this environment, where good health of people is a loss to many stakeholders in the system. The God of death ‘Yama’ seems to be happy, with these kinds of networks who bring in more business at the end.
