10-10-2006, 05:32 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Voodoo doctor </b>
The Pioneer Edit Desk
<b>Ramadoss is worrying India sick </b>
Every summer, India adds to its medical lexicon by discovering - or often rediscovering - long lost ailments. This year, the extended heat wave that has poured into October has brought with it the chikungunya and dengue viral fevers. It is an illustration of how seriously Indian politicians take health issues that, during a recent parliamentary discussion on the raging epidemic, <b>the Union Agriculture Minister publicly asked: "But why is it called chicken?" His colleague from the Health Ministry replied: "No, no, it is 'chikun' ... It has nothing to do with bird flu." </b>Â <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â Unfortunately, public confidence in the Union Health Minister is not much higher than in the epidemiological knowledge of his Cabinet colleagues. Being a doctor, Mr Anbumani Ramadoss is expected to speak on medical issues with authority and gravity. Yet, in the past weeks, he has repeatedly misled the nation. He began by insisting chikungunya was a "non-fatal" disease, and even after close to 100 people had died in Kerala insisted the deaths had not been caused by the virus but by "wrong diagnosis or false mode of treatment". Now the Health Ministry has been forced to admit that its Minister either lied or spoke through his hat; chikungunya, the Indian Council of Medical Research has conceded, can probably kill. Mr Ramadoss's quizzical pronouncements led to the Kerala Assembly uniting to condemn him, and Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan requesting the Prime Minister to ask his Health Minister to keep mum. In the case of dengue, with cases being reported every day in Delhi, Mr Ramadoss is too busy telling the press that there is "no reason to panic" and, taking recourse to semantics and nit-picking, insisting that the outbreak is not an epidemic, not yet at any rate. Can India take this man seriously? Can it trust it with national well-being?
True, the Union Health Minister cannot be held responsible for every virulent mosquito in the country. Yet, consider Mr Ramadoss's priorities since he took office two years ago. He sought to impose a bizarre ban on smoking scenes in films, apparently to spite a Tamil filmstar-politician. His cronies have now floated the balloon of a ban on soft drink advertising. He has fought a war with the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, allegedly because<span style='color:red'> his office wants to control the equipment order books at India's premier medical centre.</span> <b>Now he has set his eyes on another medical-educational showpiece - the Jawaharlal Institute of Post-graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Pondicherry</b>. He seems to react only to high-profile and high-cost medical emergencies, such as avian influenza, for which he got public health authorities to build a gigantic if wasteful stockpile of the Tamiflu anti-viral drug. If the money had been spent on cleaning up mosquito-breeding sources, India may have been spared the dengue and chikungunya scare.
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The Pioneer Edit Desk
<b>Ramadoss is worrying India sick </b>
Every summer, India adds to its medical lexicon by discovering - or often rediscovering - long lost ailments. This year, the extended heat wave that has poured into October has brought with it the chikungunya and dengue viral fevers. It is an illustration of how seriously Indian politicians take health issues that, during a recent parliamentary discussion on the raging epidemic, <b>the Union Agriculture Minister publicly asked: "But why is it called chicken?" His colleague from the Health Ministry replied: "No, no, it is 'chikun' ... It has nothing to do with bird flu." </b>Â <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â Unfortunately, public confidence in the Union Health Minister is not much higher than in the epidemiological knowledge of his Cabinet colleagues. Being a doctor, Mr Anbumani Ramadoss is expected to speak on medical issues with authority and gravity. Yet, in the past weeks, he has repeatedly misled the nation. He began by insisting chikungunya was a "non-fatal" disease, and even after close to 100 people had died in Kerala insisted the deaths had not been caused by the virus but by "wrong diagnosis or false mode of treatment". Now the Health Ministry has been forced to admit that its Minister either lied or spoke through his hat; chikungunya, the Indian Council of Medical Research has conceded, can probably kill. Mr Ramadoss's quizzical pronouncements led to the Kerala Assembly uniting to condemn him, and Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan requesting the Prime Minister to ask his Health Minister to keep mum. In the case of dengue, with cases being reported every day in Delhi, Mr Ramadoss is too busy telling the press that there is "no reason to panic" and, taking recourse to semantics and nit-picking, insisting that the outbreak is not an epidemic, not yet at any rate. Can India take this man seriously? Can it trust it with national well-being?True, the Union Health Minister cannot be held responsible for every virulent mosquito in the country. Yet, consider Mr Ramadoss's priorities since he took office two years ago. He sought to impose a bizarre ban on smoking scenes in films, apparently to spite a Tamil filmstar-politician. His cronies have now floated the balloon of a ban on soft drink advertising. He has fought a war with the director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, allegedly because<span style='color:red'> his office wants to control the equipment order books at India's premier medical centre.</span> <b>Now he has set his eyes on another medical-educational showpiece - the Jawaharlal Institute of Post-graduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Pondicherry</b>. He seems to react only to high-profile and high-cost medical emergencies, such as avian influenza, for which he got public health authorities to build a gigantic if wasteful stockpile of the Tamiflu anti-viral drug. If the money had been spent on cleaning up mosquito-breeding sources, India may have been spared the dengue and chikungunya scare.
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