The mob violence that was witnessed in Peerless Hospital on Tuesday morning is situated within the great divide in Indian society. In West Bengal, and elsewhere in India, the rich have access to the best medical care and the poor have to live with a reality where health care is non-existent or has only a nominal existence. Faced with this colossal indifference, it needs only a trigger to transform incremental resentment into violence. What happened on Tuesday morning in a rather posh hospital on the EM Bypass is an example of this. It would be facile to argue that private hospitals have no obligations to treat those who cannot afford the treatment. Or to say that it is the duty of the State to provide adequate healthcare for the underprivileged. The State has failed to do this and the private hospitals would be profoundly underestimating reality if they believed that they have no responsibilities beyond meeting the legal obligations. Legality is not the issue here (thus the question whether the concerned hospital actually refused admission to an accident victim needing emergency treatment is irrelevant); what is critical is the attitude.
Private hospitals located within an ocean of poverty and deprivation need to be conscious of their own vulnerability. One way to overcome this is to make an attempt to reach out to the surrounding community. Having a proper emergency section, not refusing emergency patients, and having free beds are only the first steps. It is not difficult to conceive of other measures. Doctors or even a team of doctors attached to a hospital could take turns to visit the poor of the locality and to treat them gratis. Camps for polio vaccination for children or for the treatment of malaria (when there is an outbreak) are steps that come easily to mind. It only requires time and some amount of organizational and logistic support from the hospital. It goes without saying that many similar steps could be thought of. Will such steps fill the enormous vacuum created by the State's failure to provide adequate healthcare to the poor? The answer is an obvious no. What such steps will demonstrate is that a hospital is not insensitive to local needs and grievances; that it takes the Hippocratic oath seriously; and is not driven by the pursuit of Mammon. A little thought and consideration could eliminate a lot of anger and the potentialities of violence.
