A fine article on health-care and religion on the
Countercurrents website.
Millions of rural people in India succumb to deaths due to
diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, kala azar and Japanese Encephalitis
that could have been avoided with basic medication or treatment. Most of these
preventable deaths in villages are due to infections of communicable, parasitic
and respiratory diseases. Deaths in villages from conditions like nutritional
deficiencies or perinatal deaths are also avoidable if they could have accessed
some kind of affordable, basic health care at the right time. Around 40% of the
rural morbidity in India is thanks to water born infectious diseases. These
diseases are (1) of the gastrointestinal tract - such as diarrhoea, amoebiasis,
typhoid fever, infectious hepatitis, worm infestations and poliomyelitis, (2)
carried in the air through coughing, sneezing or even breathing -such as
measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough and pneumonia, or (3) the difficult ones
- like malaria, filariasis and kala-azar. About 100 million people get
diarrhoea and cholera every year. There are 12 million tuberculosis cases
currently in India with 1.2 million cases added every year. Around 37, 000
cases of measles are reported every year. About 2.3 million episodes and over
1000 malarial deaths occur every year in India. An estimated 45 million people
are carriers of microfilaria. Around 1.2 million cases of leprosy exist in
India with 500, 000 cases being added every year. More than 85% of rural
children are undernourished and around 150, 000 of them die every year.
Many primary causes of ill health are based on factors such
as poverty, deprivation and environmental abuse. The health support systems of
the poor are clean water, air, forests and land. Threat to these resources is
the root cause of their ill health.
Most who flock to the god-men for miracle cures in India are
from the groups of poor women, dalits and backward communities. They work as
small farmers, agricultural labourers and artisans. They struggle hard at their
work places under adverse weather conditions to produce food and other
commodities for their urban counterparts. When they get sick, they have no one
else to turn to except their God and these god-men who claim to have miracle
cures for their ailments. They look for solutions in quacks, sorcerers and god-men.
India has many such individuals, families and trusts (which are managed like
modern corporations) who claim to have miracle cures for all kind of ailments. They
often have a very huge fan following in the rural heartland of India. They are
omnipresent and they travel to many places to conduct mass healing sessions in
emotionally charged gatherings. These god-men like the shamans of yester years
play multiple roles as a magician, medicine person, miracle-worker, healer,
priest, mystic and master of all spiritual energies and enjoy the company of
powerful business tycoons and politicians.
Such healing individuals who claim shamanic powers are not
limited to Hinduism only, they present in all other religions including Islam
and Christianity. Thousands of people from Kerala rush to ‘divine healing
centres’ set up around the clout of healing Christian priests who are believed
to have the ability to perform miracles, exorcise demons and heal afflictions.
It does not matter even if the evidence of healing offered
by these God-men does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. Their followers
continue to believe in the testimony of those who got healed, though their
healing is only a subjective experience. Critics of faith healers are usually
dealt with personal attacks and they are blamed of not having enough faith. They
gather support from members of their mother religion by crying ‘attack on their
holy faith by nonbelieving outsiders’. They survive as medical science too does
not have answers to all the questions about health, diseases and the multiple
ways through which healing takes place.
In theory, the government provides some kind of health
services - a three tier structure of health care consisting of Community Health
Centres, Primary Health Centres and Subcentres is set up for the rural areas.
But whatever limited services exist in the rural areas are either
nonfunctional, dysfunctional, or are with extremely ‘poor quality’. Most often
the service providers, especially doctors are not present in the rural
facilities. India has just six doctors and nine hospital beds for every 10,000
of its people, compared to 14 doctors and 30 hospital beds in China. About 75%
of health infrastructure, medical manpower, and other health resources are
concentrated in urban areas where 28% of the populations live in villages. A
recent survey of 15,000 households across 12 states noted that about half the
people in India and over three-fifths of those who live in rural areas have to
travel beyond 5 km to reach a healthcare centre. The survey further points out
that the availability of healthcare services is skewed towards urban centers
with these residents, who make up only 28% of the country's population, enjoying
access to 66% of India's available hospital beds, while the remaining 72%, who
live in rural areas, have access to just one-third of the bed.
Villages in the heartland of India are inhabited by poor
landless laborers, small holders, and artisans. They spent their money mostly
on food and some money on clothing and housing. Considering their ‘subsistence
existence’, spending money on health care is indeed a luxury to them. Most of
them could not afford to buy health care from the urban centers just because
they are poor. Therefore in case of extreme illnesses, the rural masses turn to
the private providers for which they have to borrow money from the money
lenders. Many studies have shown that
medical treatment is the most important cause of rural indebtedness, next only
to dowry in the rural India. Those who are indebted and those who are unable to
afford a loan finally turn to quacks, sorcerers and god-men. Not only in remote
rural and tribal areas but also in urban slums, the phenomenon of god-men is
rampant and these god-men meet a felt need of these ailing masses.
The problem of poor access to health care by the masses is
well documented by researchers umpteen times. The policy and program measures
to deal with this issue are also known to experts. What we lack is the
political will and guts to implement certain drastic measures. Today we are
left with two options in front of us. We can either continue to leave the
health care of the masses to shamans, sorcerers and godmen; and when they rally
behind their miracle cures, we can blame them for their ignorance and
superstitious habits and plan media campaigns to educate them! Or we can take
bold steps to ensure universal access to health care.
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