Our tax dollars at work at a government hospital

Until this point, our work has been almost exclusively at Deenanath, which is a private hospital. It strives to provide good service to people from all backgrounds, but it remains a private hospital. There are, however, state-run government hospitals in India, which provide care at virtually no cost. One such hospital in Pune is Sassoon Hospital, which has over 1500 beds. We had the opportunity to visit that hospital on Thursday. The hospital was founded in 1869, so it's a very old hospital--and it shows.

The campus of the hospital consists of a bunch of buildings. Some are old, and others are older. Nothing looks remotely new or particularly well-kept. The building pictured to the left dates back to the British Raj. It holds the unique distinction of being the location where Mahatma Gandhi had his appendix removed. Since we have been working primarily in the Pediatric NICU and PICU at DMH, we decided to take a visit to the pediatrics department there.

Government hospitals are overcrowded, understaffed, but at Sassoon, there are several things that are still important. The doctors know they are understaffed, but they work hard and do the best they can with the resources they have. Sometimes they take the healthiest patient out of the PICU and put them in the wards so they can put a sicker patient in their place. The other thing that was recently implemented is a state-wide computerized record system. Each patient has a single identification number that a doctor can use to access their records from any government hospital in Maharashtra. After dealing with a dizzying assortment of identification numbers to try and track down patient records at DMH, the idea of a single ID number seemed like a brilliant (though seemingly obvious) idea.

Aside from seeing the expected overcrowded clinics and dingy facilities, we came across something quite unexpected--a specialty clinic for HIV-positive children. The room was much cleaner, renovated, and far less crowded than the rest of the hospital. The reason is because the room is sponsored by grants from Johns Hopkins and NIH for testing new HIV drugs. The people at the hospital are delighted to have the facility in their hospital. In looking at the facility, I realized--as an American, these are my tax dollars at work, right here in Pune!

The NIH is one of the largest funders of medical research in the world, so it is no huge surprise that AIDS research in India is being sponsored by NIH. It is a bit surprising to run across it so unexpectedly. It's hard to know what sort of results come out of Sassoon Hospital from this program. However, it is easy to see the excitement that the chair of the Pediatrics department had in showing us this area. Seeing that excitement and knowing just what kind of effect HIV has on the population of India, I felt that there really couldn't be a much better use of my tax dollars than this.

I'll refrain from making any devisive comments regarding goverment-sponsored health care. Sassoon Hospital's free care is the standard at all government hospitals in India, and it's been successful in providing health care to anyone--barely. Anyone with the means to go to a different hospital will certainly do so. Even those who do not have means will seek a way to get treatment at a private hospital. Overcrowding and poor care are endemic in government hospitals, so only the very poor come to the hospital. Quality health care is still unavailable for most Indians. On the other hand, our government has the resources to do incredible things around the world in medicine--and has done so. I'd like to think it's possible for the government to use those resources to fix a broken health care system back home in America.