GOA’S HEALTH By Valmiki Faleiro I have always regarded the Goa Medical College hospital (GMC) as the best medical facility in the State. Not because the hospital of Asia’s oldest medical college is the best – it could certainly be better – but because it has vast facilities under a single roof, and a good pool of medical talent. GMC, admittedly, functions under severe constraints, despite at least one distinguished Goan surgeon having been Health Minister. The talent that Government salaries attract, functions without proper equipment, medicines and staff. Medical Council of India’s approval this week for a post-graduate (M.Ch.) course in Neurosurgery shows that all that GMC lacks is Government support. GMC’s handicaps were manna to better-equipped private facilities in Manipal, Belgaum, and elsewhere. GMC lacks the specialties of Cardiac, Cardio-Thoracic, Endocrinology, Urology, Neurology, Paediatric and Plastic surgery. These needed to be provided but, would you believe, Government claimed to have no funds! So, the idea of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) crept in. Public health had been put on the fast money track by the ever-resourceful former Health Minister, Dayanand Narvenkar. A young and enthusiastic Vishwajeet, the only son of veteran Chief Minister and present Speaker, Pratapsing Rane, succeeded Daya. Vishwajeet, I learn, well understands matters of money and business. I am, however, skeptical of this part sale of the GMC via PPP. Government signed a deal with a Delhi ‘Consultant’ to identify a private party for the “super speciality block” at the public GMC, even if half the town already knew who that party is. My friend Digu, the Chief Minister, justifies PPP. Government resources are inadequate for essential or desirable infrastructure development, he says. He also said that selection of private partners should be transparent. Just weeks before, when he cited Margao’s SGPDA market as a fine example of PPP, newsmen pointed out that while the builder raked in profits, only a few sheds were built for the public. That does not reflect the reality. Margao politicians had fleeced the builder, Kothari of Bombay. Private parties, like Kothari, are in business, not charity. That, I think, is the core of the PPP idea. Which Digu should know, because he too, like me, was in business. Digu inaugurated a series of four national-level workshops on PPP, held in Goa. D. Subbarao, Union Finance Secretary, said PPP would leverage government’s limited resources by private funds. Arvind Narayan, Joint Secretary, said, “Government of the day must not only be transparent but be seen to be transparent.” PPP is the newest lane for swindling public money. And if you think you may in future be caught and crucified for selling 5,000 sq. metres of GMC land to a Delhi party, appoint a ‘Consultant.’ The consultant will be crucified. Whoever controls government spending is today ‘entitled’ to a slice of it. Why do you think four experienced present Ministers are fighting over the Sports portfolio? Infrastructure for the 2011 National Games due in Goa is worth 500 crores. Why privatize public health, which serves the rich and poor alike? And what next? Given the justification for GMC’s PPP, will the entire public health system of govt. hospitals, health centres and the Health Department itself be handed over to private, profit-driven business houses by our profit-driven, business-minded politicians? Vishwajeet, the Health Minister, in fairness, demonstrated a lot of concern over soiled linen in public hospitals. He needn’t have made those surprise visits, had he read Mario Cabral e Sa, who, after another hospitalization at GMC, wrote how he was made to sleep in a messy place of food leftovers and trash, and lie on a bed sheet soiled and blood stained – not in a general ward, but the GMC’s ICU ! Why, for a perfect perspective on health, Vishwajeet need not even step out of family. Deviya, his wife, is a GMC-graduated doc, a girl known for her heart. Her father, Prakash, like his father Gurudas Timblo, is a socially accepted gentleman mineowner. Her mother, other than being a doctor who never charged a patient, hails from the stock of Purshottam Quencro, the large-hearted scion of the coconut merchant family, originally from Cortalim, that shifted to Cumbarjua on account of Portuguese religious persecution. As a lawyer in the mid-19th century, Quencro so successfully fought for rights of Goan Hindus with the crown in Lisbon, that he was made the “Barao de Cumbarjua” and, just before his demise, the Viscount of Cumbarjua – a place, like Divar, very close to my heart. TAILPIECE: I am glad Dy SP Mangaldas Dessai finally got a promotion – without going to the courts! (ENDS) The Valmiki Faleiro weekly column at: http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=330 ====================================================================== The above article appeared in the November 11, 2007 edition of the Herald, Goa
