OUR doctors go on strike sometimes because of demands for an increased
salary package, sometimes against transfers of senior doctors by the
government and sometimes against the `objectionable` behaviour of the
deceased`s family who put the blame on doctors on duty for their alleged
negligence. Ultimately, it is the patients who suffer in all such
cases.
To my surprise, hardly any doctors` association or society
demanded an inquiry or investigation whenever a patient dies owing to
professional negligence. Every day hundreds of deaths are reported but
their causeisnever putin the record.Scores of deaths as a result of
failed deliveries due to dose-related errors are blamed on malnutrition
or poor maternal health.
A huge number of deaths because of
drug-drug interaction, adverse drug interaction and drug-food
interactions areblamed on deaths due to allergic reactions.
A lot
of deaths of traumatised emergency cases occur because patients`
guardians are directed to shift the patients to a teaching hospital
without giving the patients first aid. Millions of children are being
prescribed and subsequently administered with indiscriminate
antibiotics, knowing the fact that they are getting resistant against
microbes, making it problematic to cure diversified infections with
limited antibiotics in the near future.
Why don`t medical
professionals display degrees at the place of their practice to end the
issue of quackery? Unfortunately, the clinching argument presented by
the medical fraternity is: doctors, being a highly prestigious class of
society, should not be made liable to such inquiries as it puts stress
on their moral high ground.But equally important is that until this
doctors-dominated healthcare system is made conscious of accountability,
deaths would continue to occur unreported.
Why aren`t
internationally practised standards of medical care put into practice?
Why induction of professional drug experts (pharmacists) is opposed
which can stop deaths due to drug-related errors.
Why isn`t the
practice of generic prescription allowed to be exercised, which can end
prescription of fake or adulterated drugs? Why is the establishment of
drug information centre opposed both at policymaking and district level,
cobbling of which can save millions of lives at home by providing
retaliatory measures next to snake bite, acid burning, allergic
reactions, heart attacks, electric shocks and drugrelated
complications?Massive deaths can be prevented each year just by
overhauling the healthcare system not in a way demanded by doctors, but
in accordance with the WHO guidelines and internationally practised
standards, in which accountability guarantees professional outcome.
DR ZAIB ALI SHAHERYAR Lahore
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