Food and more Food

Some time ago I had noted how Bleebed up our food management is in India...
Guess what the story gets even better....
We apparently have run out of space to store our foodgrains..this should be happy news , were it not for the fact that a significant portion of India goes to sleep hungry at night...
What is up with our babus who run FCI...how do they sleep at night ?

Doctors , Kickbacks & the Hippocratic Oath

" To practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to try to avoid harming them"

"Never to do deliberate harm to anyone for anyone else's interest."

"To keep the good of the patient as the highest priority."

Some of the verses from the oath that every doctor takes. These days it seems that a system of compensation has emerged in the medical fraternity in India which creates a conflict of interest and effectively makes doctors in India break their oath.

If you ever go to any facility that does medical tests in India and especially in Kolkata, the first thing they will ask you is the name of the doctor who has referred you to the test. There seem to be kickbacks involved wherein the doctor actually recommends only certain institutions for doing the testing, and the money the testing facility makes provides a commission to the said doctor for the tests recommended.

This extends to hospitals as well - so your patient may need a procedure and it may not require him to be admitted to a hospital ; he probably will be encouraged to get admitted because he will have to shell out more money and there is so much more dough for the doctor to make when he gets the commission from a hospital. This is in direct contrast to the medical issues in USA where insurance agencies try to prevent any procedures that may not be required ; it's another matter altogether that they take it to the other extreme.

Taking the argument a little further, it would be a matter of time when certain doctors would ' let things get a little worse' before they treat their patients in the oft chance that they the patient has to be admitted to a hospital. It was reported in the Times of India a few years back that this system of kickbacks starts from the distributors itself and that article states that gallstone surgeries have increased significantly in proportion to the marketing being done for technology intensive laproscopy.

Going to a doctor it seems has now become a dangerous proposition in itself - " Someone save me from my doctor "