Logical solutions, not emotion, are necessary.

To our shame news channels all over the world are reporting on the death of 15 women who underwent a routine sterilisation procedure, tubectomy, at a camp organised by the state government of Chhattisgarh. Trouble is that reports are mostly emotional with stupid comparison to Nazi eugenics programs. The reason why sterilisation is offered to poor people is because they have many children while the middle and rich classes have very few. Children of the poor are poorly nourished, cannot afford routine immunisation, are sent out to work by their parents because they are unable to feed them and remain illiterate, continuing poverty from one generation to the next. Repeat pregnancies, poor nutrition and unending housework ruins the health of the mothers. Contraception is vital if poverty is to be removed and the health of women and children are to be protected. Condoms maybe supplied free but women cannot force their husbands to use them. Oral contraceptives are expensive and have many side effects and intrauterine devices may cause infection due to poor hygiene. Tubectomy is a minor procedure, is permanent, not dependent on the whims of men and has no long term side effects. As is usual the doctor has been arrested although he claims to have carried out thousands of such procedures without any mishap and has blamed substandard drugs provided by the government. Also, as usual, a judicial probe has been ordered by the Chief Minister, which will take forever and the report may never be published, and after a while things will continue as before. When police raided premises of the pharma companies they found one of them was operating from a residential area with just 2 employees and one company tried to destroy evidence by burning all their stocks. How do these companies get their licenses? By bribing politicians, of course. India has hundreds of such companies making substandard drugs, which they sell by offering large margins to chemists. There are more than 350 brands of amoxycillin alone. If doctors started prescribing generics, as they are being urged to do, chemists will choose those brands on which they get maximum profits, in other words junk formulations. Trained doctors with recognised degrees are required to undergo Continuous Medical Education but no funding will be provided and drug companies have been banned from sponsoring. Yet untrained fellows can do whatever. So say our hon'ble judges. They claim to have suffered because of unnecessary tests. Really? What will be the punishment if a diagnosis was missed because tests were not done? Have we all gone bonkers? Going to Kolkata. This blog will return on 22 November if we survive Bangladeshi bombers supported by Trinamul.