MEDICINE; A MONEY MAKING BUSINESS



Last year my cousin felt abdominal pain so he went to a private hospital for checkup. He was astonished when a doctor diagnosed the failure of his kidneys due to which he felt ache and by his recommendation he got two sessions of dialysis, but didn’t feel any improvement. In such a manner he went to another urologist who amazed him by saying that he had a single kidney by birth and he would have to go for an open surgery because according to him there was a stone in his sole kidney.

He was lucky that he didn’t believe in doctors and went to a pathology lab in stress for an X-ray to see the result with his own eyes. He satisfied after seeing the report that both kidneys were present and there wasn’t any stone.

Later it was discovered that he hadn’t any problem relating to the kidney, but was suffering from gastrointestinal disease. Latter doctor who diagnosed the single kidney actually would like to remove his one kidney with open surgery to sell it to another person. As since 2011 every year different groups of six to seven members (including doctors) are being arrested, accused of illegal kidney transplant, but this crime is spreading like Lernaean Hydra.

Pakistan is a signatory to the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group (DICG) – an international organization that works under the World Health Organization to address the problems of human organs and tissues. Dr. S. Adibul Hasan Rizvi, from Sindh, as a member of DICG received emails from Canada by Dr. Francis Delmonico, the executive director of DICG, about illegal human organs transplantation in Pakistan. In reference to the emails, Dr. Hasan Rizvi sent a letter to then Chief Justice of Pakistan, Anwar Zaheer Jamali on May 10, 2016. In one of the emails, received from Dr. Francis Delmonico, attached with the letter, it was alleged that illegal kidney transplantation are carried out at Al Sayed Hospital, Rawalpindi. Dr. Francis Delmonico cited an example of a 60-year-old woman from Canada, suffering from polycystic kidney disease, underwent transplantation on April 2, 2016. But after returning home she fell seriously sick, and she hadn’t any medical record with her, which created further problems with the patient.

During the proceeding in the Supreme Court, by the Chief Justice’s suo motu notice, on August 4, 2016, Babar Awan while representing Al Sayed Hospital, accused the government of harassing the hospital’s staff, under the grab of investigation. Despite the fact that the sale of human organs and tissues is forbidden under the Transplantation of Human organs and Tissues act, 2010 and carried a heavy penalty and imprisonment, but this heinous crime is still happening in Pakistan, which cannot be conducted without the involvement of doctors.

Doctors to whom we think as a source to cure the diseases, in reality, most of them (not all) remain busy to fill their pockets; they don’t have sympathy for patients. I am raising this point to ameliorate the situation, not to criticize. Due to apathy they don’t even like to call a person with respect with his name, but call him “subject”. Doctors feel their profession as a business in which they invest about two million rupees in government or five to seven million rupees in a private medical college like a capital amount in a business to get output later. If a lawyer or any other professional joins government services, then he is not allowed to practice as a private practitioner along with his government job, but doctors also run their private clinics after their government service hours, to earn with both hands and feet. In government hospitals they don’t properly check the patients and off the record suggest them to come to their private clinics, if they want proper treatment.

There are three main functions of doctors, first is to remain abstemious that their minds don’t be used even mistakenly to help the patients. Second, to come outside from the hospital to strike on the roads for getting more salaries; Third, to recommend those medicines to the patients for which pharmaceutical companies are offering more share and to argue with medical representatives to increase their share.

A person has a limit to work, he cannot beyond that limit. If a person works while neglecting his limit to work, then it is most probable that errors will occur. While neglecting the lives of patients they commit errors only for the purpose of getting maximum profit.

Bernard Shaw in his essay “Are doctors men of science” wrote that doctors are not men of science. He was right on his stance because they don’t use scientific procedures. If a scientific procedure is used, then a patient would be diagnosed with the same disease, but the reality is that they don’t apply scientific procedure, although they don’t even know that how to use scientific procedure, they are completely unaware about it. Doctors deal with patients as darts game, that if an arrow touches the bull’s-eye, then they are winner, otherwise they pick another arrow to throw.

If unluckily a patient goes to a doctor then he gives him antibiotic, aspirin or paracetamol with some other drugs and also refers him for a laboratory checkup. If he has diagnosed the problem, then he doesn’t need to refer the patient for a checkup and only give him some medicine, but if hasn’t yet diagnosed the problem and for diagnosing he is referring the patient to a laboratory, then he should not give him medicine. But they refer patients for a checkup and recommend him medicine because they get a share from laboratories and pharmaceutical companies.

The best business to start is that in which there is a high demand of produced goods or services and no business is better than medicine from this point of view. People have to fill the doctors’ pockets from birth to death bed. About two decades ago, almost every birth was normal and there was no need to operate, but now for the purpose of earning more doctors refer every mother for C-section and scare her in such a way that if you will not go for the operation, then child and mother’s lives would be in danger, they present every case as a critical one. This problem is not only in Pakistan, but almost the whole world is facing this as in July 2015 a mother, Amber Hughes, from Leicester, England was hurriedly operated by doctors when she was 30 weeks pregnant and perplexed after cutting her open and finding no baby. In fact, she was on an anesthetic and had given birth naturally unconsciously before caesarean section. Doctor found the baby after two minutes by hearing the cries of the baby under the sheet in the bed.

This happens all around the world, especially in the developing countries that doctors hurriedly perform C-section without trying for the natural birth. C-section has many disadvantages like infection, heavy bleeding after birth, decreased bowel function after surgery, complications with mother feeding, breathing problems with child like asthma and weakness. But these disadvantages are always ignored because doctors have no concern with people’s health, but only with their profit.

Doctors give antibiotics to every patient, even of cough and flu, which kill good bacteria along with harmful bacteria and destroy the immune system of a person to make them vulnerable to diseases. Antibiotics temporarily cure the patients; on the other hand will get infected again in the near future.

Doctors are very important part of our society. If we want a healthy country, then we will have to bring reforms in it. As other government employees are not allowed to do any business or practice their profession privately, so doctors should also be prohibited to run their private clinic. Like anti-corruption department, a department should be established where patients register their complaints against doctors, even practicing privately or in government hospitals. Last, but not least a limit should be maintained for doctor fee and no doctor should be allowed to charge more than that limit.


Jamal Abdul Nasir
jamalpsychologist@gmail.com