India’s healthcare system lacks checks and balances: Expert

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: The drug companies have been using many questionable tactics to persuade the doctors to prescribe their medicine and private hospital often use very dubious methods to fleece patients, said Dr Sanjay Nagral, a wellknown Mumbai-based gastrointestinal surgeon and a member of the editorial board for The Indian Journal Board of Ethics, in a video interview.

In a chat with TV journalist Faye D’Souza, Dr Nagral spoke about the recent controversy surrounding Dolo tablets during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company that manufactures the tablet, Micro Labs, had reportedly provided freebies worth Rs 1,000 crore.

Dr Nagral observed that sometimes when a doctor looks at one of these freebies by a pharmaceutical company, it subtly reflects on the prescription slip. He said the original molecules cost more because the companies are allowed to charge more and when the replicas are made, often by highprofile Indian companies, they are sold at a lower value.

He pointed out that cheap drugs need not necessarily mean bad quality. He was very critical of hospitals telling patients to purchase medicines from the in-house pharmacy, and called for greater transparency in this regard. He lamented that India has done little for healthcare welfare. Individuals pay for 80% of their medical expenses from their own pocket, whereas in most developed countries government hospitals are efficiently run and have systems in place.

Here people have to go to private hospitals for quality healthcare. He also took exception to the tendency of doctors becoming entrepreneurs and setting up hospitals, and said it was a clear case of conflict of interest.

He said South Asia and India have poor standards of healthcare regulation, and no clear boundaries have been defined, no designated third party monitoring of healthcare professionals. Dr Nag ral said the pandemic badly exposed the weaknesses of India’s healthcare system. Even well-off and influential patients had to struggle to get a bed and oxygen cylinder and many died not because of the virus, but due to lack of timely medical help