Dear Friends,
My team and I at Bombay Hospital hope you and your family members are safe and healthy during this incredible pandemic which has ripped through our entire planet. We initially felt India was less affected due to our immunity, but for variety of reasons the numbers of COVID positive cases are climbing, and so are the deaths! We cannot afford to be complacent or lower our guard for a long time to come, even after the lockdown, whenever it’s announced !
Amongst the guardians of our society, doctors and other health workers, nurses and paramedics, technicians, municipal workers and police are working round-the-clock to ensure your safety, risking their lives, and of their families, in trying to protect you all. I am sure you all understand and appreciate their contribution and sacrifices.
On Sunday, 19th April, we lost one more doctor, and the third neurosurgeon of our country, to COVID. 53 years old Dr. Simon Hercules, who ran his “New Hope Hospital”, a private nursing home in Tamil Nadu, and a humane and humble personality, much loved by his patients and colleagues, died after battling COVID for two weeks. The ambulance carrying his dead body to the burial ground was stopped, stoned, glass windows and windshield shattered by a large group of misled, misinformed, insensitive locals demanding the body be cremated and not buried. The driver of the ambulance was thrashed and the Doctor’s body dragged out and placed in the open street. No police or any law enforcing authority stepped in to control this unruly mob. Finally, his colleague and good friend, Dr. Pradeep Kumar, an Orthopaedic Surgeon practising with Dr. Simon for 6 years, appealed to the protesting crowd, and with the help of two ward boys of the hospital drove the ambulance himself carrying Dr Simon’s body in it on that Sunday night to the cemetery. He dug the ground himself with a shovel to make the grave and tearfully rested the body of Dr. Simon Hercules in it with due respect.
We Indians call ours as the most ancient and glorious civilisation. This was a true example of how uncivilised and insensitive we can be. The crowd paid no respect for their departed hero, and in fact humiliated him at the time when he deserved the utmost respect for all that he did for humanity. Would any of these misguided people have allowed such indignity in death to be given to anyone near and dear to them? Ironically, only a few days ago on 22nd March at 5.00 pm, led by our Hon’ble PM, the entire nation clapped for a full 5 minutes to show their gratitude to the medical community.
National and State Medical Associations have already condemned the shameful act exhibited against Dr. Simon in Tamil Nadu. Politicians that they are, gave assurance of an inquiry and action to be taken against the miscreants. Time and again we have seen irate people attacking on-duty doctors and nurses when their loved ones succumb due to extreme or terminal illness. On numerous occasions doctors have been brutally hurt and on one instance a doctor even tragically died of such injuries. In spite of that, doctors have never stopped serving the people. Parliamentarians have passed the bill for non-bailable arrest of such offenders. Most of the states of India also already have strong laws against attacks on medical workers. But this has hardly been enforced or helped, and such violent actions continue to occur at regular intervals simply because the doctors have been considered a soft target, by politicians on one hand and hoodlums on the other. And now comes an instance when, not just the living doctors, even the dead body of a doctor dying in harness has been treated with utmost disrespect.
It may seem heartening that after the recent event, and in response to the national uproar, specially by Indian Medical Association and Neurological Society of India, within 72 hours of the aforementioned event the cabinet swiftly swung into action and approved an ordinance to amend the Epidemic Disease Act, 1897, making acts of violence against doctors and frontline personnel a cognisable and non-bailable offense punishable with prison terms of upto 7 years and fine of upto Rs. 5 lacs. In case of damage to property or assets, violators would also have to pay as compensation double the market price of the damage caused. These measures are taken urgently to create a sense of security and confidence among the health fraternity, without which the nation would crumble during this COVID crisis. This is an ordinance, and so will remain in effect only until the epidemic lasts and until 6 weeks after the next session of the Parliament commences. It may then be redebated and if and after it is passed by both the Houses becomes a law. Interestingly, most states of India already have strong laws against attacks on medical workers. We surely don’t need another law! We need better implementation of the existing laws; and above all, Respect for medical practitioners, right through the year, not just in Corona times!
This kind of a shameful act needs to be individually and collectively condemned at all levels. I appeal to your sensitive and sensible self to voice your protest through social media and on other platforms opposing such despicable acts against medical professionals, who continue to remain the frontline warriors of this battle against COVID, and forever, as long as humanity exists on this planet.
I may add that I have been in this noble profession for nearly 50 years. And our generation of doctors loved their patients and practised the art of healing passionately and unconditionally. In turn we were rewarded by our patients with their respect and trust. I do not recall any instances of disgraceful behaviour on part of either doctors or their patients. This beautiful Doctor-Patient relationship has somewhere, in recent years, gone sour, and a law promulgated a couple of decades ago has made this profession into a “service provider” and the patient a “consumer”. With these recently increasing incidents of doubt and hostility, the best brains of the community are no longer attracted to choose medicine as a career. Who stands to lose?? The society has to think deeply and decide within itself about the future of its own health.
Medicine is an uncertain field. Behaviour of diseases, action of medicines and response to surgeries varies from patient to patient. Hence treatment outcomes are also variable. No doctor would ever think of causing any harm to his patients, but if an occasional patient worsens or succumbs it has to be scientifically reasoned and tackled. However emotionally draining or frustrating it may be, you cannot deal with it by physical force or violence.
May the society at large and the powers-to-be acknowledge the pristine position of the profession and its practitioners and enforce laws that will unsparingly penalise the black sheep when they attack the white coat. We hope this becomes the law of the land, not just until the pandemic lasts but for the entire future. Hopefully, the warm Doctor-Patient relationship returns to its old glory.
Prof. Dr. Keki Turel,
Prof. Emeritus, Neurosurgery,
Bombay Hospital, Mumbai.
