A Three Headed Monster

My last post was a product of immense frustration i am feeling these days while working as a resident in a trust hospital in Delhi which caters mostly to middle to lower income groups. And i have come across some 12-15 patients, in their middle ages with diabetic nephropathy with CKD stage IV to V in just a period of 2 months of my new job. And the element of surprise is that they were diagnosed to be diabetic only recently after coming in delayed contact with Healthcare. Adding to frustration was – some of them telling me “Sir jub se is hospital mein aaye hein tabhi se yeh sab kuch hua hai … nahi to mein kabhi beemar hee nahi hua !!!“.

I mean…How would you react to such kind of statement ??

Anyways, now that the problem has raised its ugly head, what are the ways available to fix it ?
The answer i get is : “Comprehensive conservative management and initiation of Renal Replacement Therapy”.
Renal Replacement Therapy !!! If i am right that implies :either a dialysis or a transplant.

As we all know Renal Transplant is a rare commodity available only to a lucky few (read lucky as rich).
So in short, how many dialysis can a lower to middle class family afford equates to the amount of life they can buy.

I also feel that each and every step of disease management is restricted by limiting resources especially in India with most of the healthcare bills being paid out of the pocket. Whether the treatment to a ailment is available or not, sometimes seems to be irrelevant.

I am clueless about whom to blame : The Naive attitude of People towards there own health or The Economic System or The Incapability of Medicine as a science !!
Or may be its like a three headed monster trying to eat you and you are trying to figure out which head is smaller…

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The Arogyada
www.arogyada.in

Medicine as a science is still primitive !!!

As a patient or as a doctor, this thing will always come to your mind when you will find yourself restrained by though-modern-but-seemingly-primitive methods of the medicine, if compared to other streams of science.

After the advent of antibiotics we have somehow been able to conquer the infective diseases but now we have a waging war coming up where our opponents will be the lifestyle diseases. The special attribute of lifestyle diseases working against us is their ability to involve multiple organ systems at a time. Their effects on whole body are in the form of a continuum throughout the body and not just on isolated organs or organ systems.

While our approach in fighting these diseases is very short sighted!!! We don’t actually cure them but just postpone them to let them reappear at a latter date. Without primary care our fight against diseases is irrelevant. In spite of great advances in diagnostic investigations our actions on the diagnosed diseases are mild.

We deal with the human body by dividing it into separate organ systems and most of the strategy in our hands is predominantly defensive. We are in acute need of ways to find out more aggressive ways with pin pointed precision and actually uprooting the pathology then just alleviating the symptoms and waiting for the body to heal by itself.

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The Arogyada
www.arogyada.in