Author: Subhadra Menon
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143031635
Description
India is the chosen land for millions across the world who come here in search of physical and spiritual well-being. It is a matter of great irony then, that for the average Indian with little money to spare, quality health care still remains a distant reality.
Over the years, Indians have silently witnessed the near-total degeneration of the country's basic health-care services. The slow but certain breakdown of the primary health-care sector has fuelled the unregulated growth of private nursing homes, clinics and trendy health resorts that dish out packaged health care in the name of holistic healing, making health care the prerogative of a fortunate few.
In No Place to Go, Subhadra Menon provides a comprehensive account of the changes that have taken place in the country's health sector since Independence. She writs about the unwillingness of doctors to practise in small towns and villages, which has forced people to seek help from unrecognized medical practitioners. She also reveals, by means of detailed case studies, how several well-meaning policies of the government have fallen flat because of the inefficiency of the officials who are meant to implement them, and how cheap, spurious drugs flooding the market have resulted in the tragic loss of many lives.
Through it all, however, Menon lauds the islands of positive effort-successful community-level programmes and government projects as well as inspired individuals working to deliver effective health-care service-which have proved beyond doubt that people's participation and strengthened linkages between the government and the private sector will one day result in a healthier India.
REVIEW
The careful and responsible management of the well-being of the population is the very essence of good government.
-The World Health Report, 2000
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION
India's Killers: The Big and The Not-So-Big
The Woman and the Child: Fighting For Attention
Disturbed, Distressed, Damned
In Deep slumber, or Just Waking Up
Sick and Up Against a Wall
The Drug Makers
In the global Scheme of Things
Town Mouse, Country Mouse
Making it work
References