I read with a shudder that Maharashtra is allowing homeopaths who complete a one year course in modern pharmacology to prescribe certain allopathic medicines.
What an extraordinary shortcut!
Perhaps tomorrow, after attending a weekend workshop, I will be permitted to fly an aircraft. I have travelled frequently, watched pilots entering cockpits, and even know that planes are supposed to take off before they land. Surely that should qualify me?
Or perhaps my wife, who is an allopathic doctor, could become a chartered accountant after learning multiplication for six months. She already knows how to calculate a patient’s pulse, so balance sheets should not be too difficult!
But medicine is not a joke.
I have watched my wife study for years to become a doctor. Even today, she attends continuing medical education programmes and seminars to keep herself informed. Medical knowledge does not remain inside the university classroom. New diseases appear. New drugs are developed. Old treatments are discarded. Dosages change. Side effects are discovered. Drug interactions can save a patient or kill one.
Yet we imagine that a brief bridge course can somehow bridge an ocean.
This is not an attack on homeopaths. They have studied their own system of medicine and should practise it responsibly. But homeopathy and allopathy are different disciplines. If they were identical, there would have been no need to give them different names, establish different colleges, prescribe different curricula, and award different degrees.
The argument, apparently, is that these newly qualified practitioners can serve in villages, slums, and small towns where there are not enough doctors.
Ah, what a brilliant idea! Let the cities have fully trained doctors while the poor receive shortened qualifications.
The villager may not examine the certificate on the wall. The slum dweller may only ask how much the consultation costs. But lack of education does not make a person’s life less valuable. A poor patient’s heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys are exactly like those of a minister, industrialist, or bureaucrat.
If rural India lacks doctors, then train more doctors and create conditions that encourage them to serve there. Ask every medical college to require its graduates to spend two years in underserved areas. Offer proper salaries, housing, equipment, security, and opportunities for further study. Institutions such as CMC Vellore have long demonstrated the value of service commitments.
Do not solve a shortage by lowering the standard.
A medicine prescribed incorrectly does not ask whether the patient is rich or poor before causing harm. Every prescription carries responsibility. Every diagnosis requires training. Every patient deserves competence.
Because every life, whether in a Mumbai tower or a village hut, is precious..!
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