Unmasking the duplicity of some hospitals in AndhraPradesh..

I call myself an avid reader of all kinds of books and mostly enjoy reading thriller and mystery novels. It is one thing to read of the games between life and death in books and another to come across it in real life. One such story which my father narrated a few minutes ago left my jaw hanging for a while. And my thoughts stopped for a few minutes trying to grasp the seriousness and implications of what it meant to the helpless and naive people in our state. This is an incident that took place in a hospital in Nellore, Andhra Pradesh and I urge everyone read it and spread awareness so that innocent lives are not lost in vain.

One day an old farmer is brought to the hospital in Nellore by his wife as he had entered into a comatose state. The doctor assigned to the case declares the man brain dead. He tells the wife that it is a lost case and he might never recover. The husband being the sole bread earner of the family, the wife expresses despair and starts crying in front of the doctor. Seizing his opportunity, the doctor breaks to her a plan that would not only make her considerably rich but also benefits another family from the deal. What he says is this. There is another patient in the same hospital in ICU who is currently looking for a kidney transplant. His family have been looking for a suitable match for a while and fortunately the husband meets all the criteria. The family is therefore willing to provide her with an amount of 7 lakhs for one of her husband's kidney. The woman is from rural background and has no knowledge of how much a kidney is really worth or what he means by most of his medical terms. All she gathers from his deal is she would get an amount of 7 lakhs and that would sustain her for the rest of her life even with her husband in an invalid condition.

So she finger stamps all the documents put forth and sends her husband to the operating theater. The operation is done and she doesn't hear back from the doctor. The nurses who showed excessive interest and obsequiousness to her prior to the operation tell her she can't see the doctor who happens to be "suddenly" busy. After waiting for three days at the hospital, she hears from him. Instead of an originally promised 7 lakhs, he tells her the family can only afford to give her 3 lakhs and that he is sorry, she has to make it do with what she gets. I think they thought that since she is from a village she will accept what is given and silently go away. But they underestimated the woman's will to get her due and she files a police case against the hospital for cheating her of her promise. What the police find out through investigation is so amazing and fantastic it can't be real. It must be a novel or a horror story..

The doctor's dodge the police requests to see the husband's body who they said is in coma. The police eventually find out that the husband is falsely declared as 'brain dead'. During the operation to get his kidney, they empty his body of all his other vital organs like heart, liver, eyes and brain.. The man is now an empty shell with nothing left in him..dead. It blows up into major scandal in the state and the government(led by honorable and righteous people, TDP) shuts down the hospital. Medical licenses from the doctors are revoked and they are prevented from practicing anywhere else in the country. This is until, of course the next election results come out which is 1 month later. A new government in place(led by corrupt, lawless people) - the hospital is reopened.

How can anyone tell what happens to innocent(frankly, ignorant) folks who go believing that doctors uphold the values inherent in their profession? Is the value of a poor man so less that he gets exploited in everyway possible? Why is life so fragile and especially if one is poor and weak to fight back?