I don't know if this happens all over the world, but here in my country. I know of someone who needed surgery on a Friday morning, and before the evening of that Friday, he was gone. It was not as if the doctors were unable to help him, but they were told to make some deposit to the hospital account before they begin the surgery, but they were unable. That family was running around, calling for help while this man was on the hospital bed, running out of time.
Though I was unable to wrap my head around this then because I was still a bit young to clearly know why what happened to him happened. We all blamed the hospital, the doctors, and even the oath they took, which I also joined them to do. Because they swore an oath to always preserve life at all costs, and this was something they could have easily done which stuck in my mind for a long while.
But I have gotten more understanding now, which is honestly more painful and more complicated. Now I have gotten to know that doctors in the hospital are just like soldiers. They also follow instructions, and that is why it a doctor tells a family to make a deposit before any operation can be done, he is simply following the written policy of that hospital, not from cruelty, even though some can be at times. He is also working inside a system that owes them salaries. That is why some of them go on strike for weeks because they are not properly compensated, they don't have enough equipment to work with and save lives, and they are short staffed because a lot of doctors are now going abroad to look for a better life. And yet, a lot of us expect them to be performing miracles inside a structure held together by insufficient funding and administrative neglect. The oaths all these doctors took were very sincere. But the country, hospital, and environment he is practicing in have failed them because they were not built to support those oaths, and this is one of the reasons why these top government officials usually travel abroad to find better medical care. They know what is going on.
And this is also one of the conversations that makes some people uncomfortable. We are missing the deeper point entirely, and this is why we always direct our frustration towards the doctors. For a lot of decades now, the government hospital that was built to carry the weight of indigent patients has been stripped of that capacity. And now the private hospitals are not expensive businesses operating in the economy that has failed us woefully. No one in this chain is ready to absorb the loss.
That man that died, none of this brings him back. None of it makes the policy right or humane. No one should lose their life because their family is unable to come up with a medical bill short at the wrong hour.
But now that I know better, I have been asking some very hard questions. Who was that person who built a hospital, healthcare clinic, maternity, where a sworn oath and payment receipt has now become the same conversation? And who are the people that has kept it this way? And in my opinion, these are the people we should all direct our angers towards because the doctors in the healthcare, hospitals are rarely where the problem began. But they are the one talking the fault.
Thank you for reading.
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