Andhra Pradesh - Nalgonda   

Whose medicare is it anyway?

By S. Ramu

NALGONDA, JULY 23. Unable to cope with the mounting debt burden, Kandala Damodar Reddy (40), a farmer of Nomula in Nakrekal mandal, consumed pesticide the other day. Members of his family forced him to drink tamarind juice, which is considered an antidote to poison.

The traditional `first aid' worked well on Damodar Reddy initially. Trouble started when the family members rushed him to the Government hospital at Nakrekal. ``I fell on the feet of doctors to get first aid for my husband. They bluntly told me to take him to the district headquarters hospital as the hospital does not have sufficient medicines,'' Reddy's wife, Andal, a mother of three children, told The Hindu on Friday.

"We don't have medicines. If you want to know the reason for it, go and ask the person whom you have voted for,'' Andal quoted a doctor as saying when the irate family insisted for treatment.

Police intervene

The hapless family approached the local police. With the intervention of the police, doctors admitted him to the hospital and provided first aid. Reddy was rushed to Nalgonda in the evening. Incidentally, district headquarter hospitals doctors also advised Andal to shift him to Hyderabad. "Government doctors do not want to take risk,'' the State secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), Kaasam Venkateswarlu, says.

`What I can do?'

When a group of reporters visited the stinking medical ward, where Reddy was being treated, the medical staff was persuading Andal to shift him to Hyderabad. "If they don't like to shift him to Hyderabad, take an undertaking from his family stating that they are retaining him in our hospital at their risk,'' the medical Superintendent, K. Suresh Kumar, was instructing his subordinates.

``What can I do (except to refer him to Hyderabad)? We are seen as murderers when patients die because of poison they have consumed," he said.

"Just to pass the buck on to others, doctors brand every case serious and refer patients to higher grade hospitals. They are unmindful of the psychological impact it can have on the patient and members of his family,'' Mr. Venkateswarlu, who was here to study the conditions in the hospital, said.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh

News: Front Page | National | Tamil Nadu | Andhra Pradesh | Karnataka | Kerala | New Delhi | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | Updates: Breaking News |

Stories in this Section

• Whose medicare is it anyway?
• Tribal farmer ends life

Copyright © 2004, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu