FROM THE PRESS
Gujarat's inhumanity
Lack of medication is believed to have led to the
deaths of at least four people at the Shah Alam Dargah, one of the four safe
houses in Ahmedabad. The victims could not be shifted to a hospital because
there was no government official to give them cover from the mobs. Nor could
government doctors be brought to the safe house.
There are very few doctors with very little
equipment and drugs in the safe houses. Most people here have burns, fractures
and abrasions while serious cases are clandestinely sent to hospital in private
ambulances.
432 additional OPDs have been created at state
hospitals after the riots broke out, but fear of the mobs has forced most
Muslims to rush back to the safe houses after getting preliminary treatment. But
the safe houses have not been able to provide follow-up treatment, leading to
deaths.
Vinay Menon.
How safe are the safe houses? Hindustan Times, Ahmedabad, March 4, 2002
Social responsibilities forgotten
In stark contrast to the response to the earthquake
in 2001, not one of hundreds of NGOs and corporates helped the thousands
rendered destitute and homeless by the communal riots in Gujarat. Individuals
went to hospitals and relief camps providing food, clothes and medicines.
Fifteen relief camps, in Ahmedabad alone, provided shelter to over 50,000
displaced persons but hardly any NGO [of over 300 NGOs] came forward during the
first four to five days when help was most urgently required However, the
smaller NGOs like the St Xaviers Social Service Society, the Citizen's
Initiative, the Kamdaar Swasthya Suraksha Mandal and the Shah Alam Islamic Trust
first ventured into the burning city to provide assistance to the victims.
Even pharmas, including Torrent, Cadila, Zydus
Cadila, Core and Intas, made no attempts to reach out to the victims with free
medicines.
Jyotsna Bhatnagar.
Communal violence claims social conscience. Financial Express, March 9
2002.
Exceptions to the
rule…
When most of Gujarat was afflicted by the madness,
staff at the state-owned Civil Hospital in Meghaninagar did yeoman service,
rescuing the injured, irrespective of their religious affiliations.
"Those who killed innocents, either in Godhra or in
Ahmedabad, did what they thought their religion was. I went by my religion and
saved them," says Dr Prashant Baranwal.
"We were coming to do our job, but there was
something definitely wrong in the air. In these circumstances, anyone could be
carried away," says nurse Anushka.
However, ultimately, good sense prevailed in "all
of us", says Sister R D Patel and adds, " this is the sanctity of our
profession".
Communalism and
doctors
Following an attack on a doctor in a
minority-dominated area, the Ahmedabad Doctors Forum has appealed to doctors
practising in the areas and hospitals run by minority trusts to stop their
practice if they are not provided security. The forum founder, Dr Bharat Amin,
said that doctors practising in such areas were not provided any protection and
their life was not safe. Therefore, they should stop their practice. Meanwhile,
the BJP doctors cell President, Dr Anil Patel, has demanded action against those
involved in assaults on doctors. "A noble profession should not be discriminated
on the basis of religion," he added
Doctors asked not to practise in minority-dominated
areas PTI Ahmedabad, April 11, 2001.
(Note: Please read theMFC reportfor comments on attacks on
doctors in Gujarat.)
A challenge to
doctors
A doctor in rural Vadodara said that the wounded
who started pouring in from February 28 had injuries of a kind he had never
witnessed before, even in earlier situations of communal violence. In a grave
challenge to the Hippocratic oath, doctors have been threatened for treating
Muslim patients, and pressurised to use the blood donated by RSS volunteers only
to treat Hindu patients. Sword injuries, mutilated breasts and burns of varying
intensity characterised the early days of the massacre. Doctors conducted
post-mortems on a number of women who had been gang-raped, many of whom had been
burnt subsequently.
Effects of war in Sri Lanka on
health
Staff members of the international relief
organisation Doctors Without Borders describe the physical and mental health
consequences of conflict in Sri Lanka where more than 64,000 people have died,
and hundreds of thousands displaced, in a 19-year-old civil war. The displaced
are settled in government-run camps. "The desperate living conditions, and the
general level of trauma within the population, is reflected by the alarming rate
of suicide in the camps, which is almost three times higher than in the
community." There are few doctors, and low access, availability, and quality of
health care. The living conditions in the welfare centres must be improved and
the acute psychosocial and practical needs of the population must be addressed
by the authorities.
Kaz de Jong, et al. Psychological trauma of the
civil war in Sri Lanka. The Lancet April 27, 2002
Palestinian health workers
harassed
The World Medical Association condemned the
targeting and harassment of health workers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Since April, 28 Palestinian Red Crescent Society workers have been detained by
Israeli forces. Three ambulance crews were arrested shortly after leaving their
station on an emergency call. The society's president, Younis Al-Khatif, was
arrested with them. The ambulance crews and Al-Khatif were released the next day
after protests from other national Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations.
Six more of the Red Crescent Society's paramedics
were arrested while tending sick and injured people in the West Bank city of
Jenin, which was closed off by order of the Israeli defence forces. Israel
claims that the society's ambulances have been used to smuggle weapons, although
no charges have been brought in any of the arrests.
Three workers with the Palestinian Red Crescent
Society have been killed since the Intifada began, and 140 have been injured. On
March 4, the head of emergency medical services in Jenin was killed when two of
the society's ambulances were allegedly fired on by Israeli soldiers in a nearby
building. Five other health workers were wounded in that attack. Witnesses
claimed that the soldiers fired on paramedics trying to reach their colleagues
trapped in the burning ambulances. One UN ambulance man has also been killed.
The Israeli humanitarian ambulance service, Magen
David Adom, and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society have issued joint
statements declaring their condemnation of all attacks on ambulances and their
determination to keep treating the sick and injured irrespective of their
nationality.
Avi Zohar, director general of Magen David Adom,
said that four workers with his organisation have been killed and 11 wounded
while performing humanitarian work. On March 31, a Palestinian suicide bomber
detonated a bomb inside a Magen David Adom ambulance station in Israel, wounding
four staff.
Owen Dyer.World
Medical Association condemns harassment of health workers in West Bank and Gaza.
BMJ, April 27, 2002.
Doctors against war
Doctors in India and Pakistan are campaigning
against the threat of nuclear war between the two countries. The campaigns have
been spearheaded by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear
War (IPPNW) and its affiliates. The IPPNW wrote, in a letter to the Indian prime
minister, AB Vajpayee, and the Pakistani president, Pervez Musharraf, that the
countries' nuclear arsenals are "capable of destroying both countries as
functional societies." The letter cautions that there can be no effective
medical response to the catastrophe that would follow a nuclear attack on cities
such as Mumbai or Karachi.
Shamim-ur-Rahman, Ganapati
Mudur.Doctors in India and Pakistan campaign against nuclear war. BMJ,
June 15, 2002.
Punjab's sex determination
problem
Fatehgarh district ( Punjab) has the dubious
distinction of having the lowest child sex ratio in the country. The Akal Takht
- the highest seat of spiritual and temporal authority amongst Sikhs - issued a
diktat on April 6 2001 prohibiting pre-natal sex determination and threatening
violators with social boycott and excommunication.
Since the Supreme Court directed all states to
implement the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of
Misuse) (PNDT) Act, 1994, the Punjab government registered 14 cases over the
next few months.
In Haryana, the focus has been on unscrupulous
doctors and not on the women who are themselves victims of family pressures
whereas in Punjab, it is the women themselves who are being
targeted.
Laxmi Murthy.India:
Where Have all the Young Girls Gone? Women's Feature Service, June 5, 2002.
New ethics body for developing
world
Strategic Initiative for Developing Capacity in
Ethical Review (SIDCER) will be a new central fund-raising and communications
body for regional fora seeking to implement new ethical standards in clinical
trials in the developing world. SIDCER began as part of the WHO's Tropical
Disease Research department, and led to the development of several regional
ethical and educational for a in Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin
America.
It is hoped that the network will help avoid
repeats of past claims of unethical practices in third world countries,
particularly with respect to AIDS drug trials in Africa. This has PR relevance
as well as commercial ramifications
Reuters. New body to oversee clinical trial
ethics in developing world. Reuters Health, May 30, 2002.
Ethical issues in ECT
A voluntary organisation, Sarthak, has urged the
Indian Supreme Court to ban the use of ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) without
anaesthesia in mentally ill patients. It also seeks to make informed consent
mandatory in all ECT procedures. Patients received minor and occasionally severe
injuries while receiving ECT without anaesthesia.
Advocates of ECT argue that its practice in India
is defensible because many organisations lack anaesthesia facilities, are not
attached to hospitals and have no anaesthetists on call. Doctors campaigning
against ECT without anaesthesia say the lack of infrastructure is an
unacceptable excuse.
Ganapati Mudur.
Indian group seeks ban on use of ECT without anaesthesia. BMJ April 6,
2002
Lokayukta active in tackling
corruption
The Karnataka State Junior Doctors' Association has
welcomed the action of Karnataka Lok Ayukta Justice N. Venkatachala in removing
Balakrishna, a corrupt examiner of Vijayanagar Institute of Medical Sciences,
Bellary, from exam duty. Association president Vijaya Kumar HG has urged medical
students to bring to his attention any such corrupt practices for appropriate
action to be taken.
Times News Network. Doctors laud corrupt
examiner's removal. The Times of India, April 24, 2002.
Virginity not a medical
issue
The Spanish conservative party Partido Popular has
urged the Andalusian government to make it illegal for doctors in the Andalusian
health service to issue virginity certificates. The prohibition should be
observed "even when the patient is under age and accompanied by her parents."
Dr Jaume Padrós, secretary of the Official Medical
College of Barcelona, noted that the aim of medical certificates was to certify
"health states," and whether a woman was a virgin was not a medical condition.
Xavier Bosch.
Spanish doctors draw up advice on ethics of virginity certificates. BMJ,
April 27, 2002
Learn - and earn!
A new American company called Time-Concepts LLC
offers doctors $50 each time they listen to a medical representative's sales
pitch. Of the $105 that the company receives from the drug manufacturer per
consultation, $50 goes to the doctor, $5 to a charity and $50 to itself.
Doctors are accepting the payments, despite the
guidelines from the American Medical Association specifying that they should not
accept cash payments from drug companies. Some claim that this helps them
control when and how to talk to the representatives as well as to get drug
information. An AMA spokesman points out that if the purpose of the contact is
to educate the physician, then there is no need to pay the physician
David Spurgeon. Doctors accept $50 a time to
listen to drug representatives BMJ May 11, 2002
Karachi doctors under
attack
In the past three years, more than 80 doctors have
been killed in Pakistan's largest city, ambushed during their daily commutes ...
The Pakistan Medical Association, the largest professional body of doctors in
Pakistan, began leading a wave of protest strikes ...The delivery of medical
care in the city has suffered...It goes against the ethic of our profession, but
we are desperate and scrambling. ..Because a particular religious sect has been
targeted, the origins of the attacks may well be in religious extremism..
.
Saad Shafqat,A new
hazard of medicine. BMJ April 27, 2002.
