The Bengal Govt Claims Healthcare Has Been Hurt as Doctors Protest. This Rings Hollow

There has long been a trend of attributing catchy quotes to Mark Twain and this is just one of them: “There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies and statistics.”

Apparently Mark Twain himself attributed this one to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

No matter who said this first, the quote perfectly suits the arguments put forward by Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal on behalf of the Bengal government, during the recent court proceedings at the Supreme Court. In addition to being misleading, his statistics were wrong too.

What Sibal argued there, in essence, was that the cease-work by junior doctors in Bengal has created havoc in the state healthcare services. But how is that feasible? Out of hundreds of government healthcare centres – from health centres to rural hospitals and state general hospitals – only a few, approximately 26, are medical colleges and junior doctors (namely, interns, house-staff, post-graduate trainees, and senior residents) are posted in only those few medical colleges. In such institutions, junior doctors' jobs, as trainees, is to assist the senior physicians in treating patients. So, how can the mere absence of such trainee doctors create such havoc in the government healthcare system?

Secondly, according to Sibal who represented the Bengal government, just because of this ongoing cease-work, six lakhs of poor patients were left unattended and untreated, approximately six and half lakhs of pathological tests were not done, more than 15,000 invasive cardiological procedures were postponed and so on. Where do these statistics come from?

Interestingly, the Bengal government said that more than 20 patients (23 or 24) died just because of this cease-work. Well, every death is unfortunate, but how did the government and Sibal confirm the reason behind these deaths?

As far as I know, the Bengal government did not submit any affidavit stating a list of names of the persons who died along with their causes of death. So we cannot check the veracity of this statement. A list of such names – provided , allegedly, by Swasthya Bhawan or the health department – were published in a newspaper which is closely linked with the ruling party. That list is startling. In that list of deaths caused by junior doctors, 40% of the patients had been in hospitals where junior doctors are not posted at all – let alone them ceasing work in protest. One death is marked as ‘died in an ambulance’. Is the implication therefore this, that junior doctors when working are meant to treat patients as their ambulance is in transit?

Now, a much simpler question arises. What were the Swasthya Bhavan authorities doing after having become aware of these deaths? As far as I know, Swasthya Bhavan authorities were in close connection with local authorities of all medical college hospitals during this period of cease-work. The hospitals had been confident that in spite of some problems due to shortage of manpower, services were largely running flawlessly. If that is true, and if so many persons died in spite of such assurances, then why did the Swasthya Bhavan authorities not issue show-cause notices to those medical college authorities – since such deaths reflect lack of service, even negligence? Were they simply counting the number of deaths so that they could submit an impressive number to the Supreme Court?

There was, however, one death that we all know of. That of the raped trainee doctor, while she was on duty at a government medical college. These lies and statistics are perhaps intended to hide this death.

The people of Bengal know the truth – and most of them are on the road demanding justice.

Bishan Basu is an oncologist in the West Bengal Health Services. Views are personal.

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