Three cheers to the Karnataka Government!!

After a long time, got to read something positively good (read that as – not irritating, not depressing, not infuriating!) in the papers. The Karnataka Government has planned a Bill on making it mandatory for private hospitals to attend to the victims of accidents and other emergencies, rather than sending them to Government Hospitals, or pushing for a police enquiry. This will surely come as a huge relief to all those patients who are turned down by hospitals, when they report in after an accident, or such occurence happening under medico-legal conditions.

A huge debate still prevails on whether the life of a victim is less important than the cause of the accident and the identification of the guilty. One party says that life is important, under any circumstance. The other says that you cannot destroy evidence by altering a victim’s state before recording it, ’cause if the guilty is let loose, he (Ok… for people who may find the ‘he’ sexist, lemme add  ‘he/she’ ) shall strike again. I tend to bend towards the former argument. Even if an enquiry/post-mortem is conducted, there’s no guarantee that the victim will get justice; but by giving him timely first aid, atleast his life will be assured!!

In a case of suicide, accident, attempted murder, or anything like that; don’t the questions like “How it happened?”, “Why it happened?”, and  “Who is responsible for the situation” hold far lesser importance than “How we can improve the situation”?? Imagine the trauma of a wife, whose husband fell-off the ladder and is serious; being asked which rung of the ladder he fell from and what he was doing on it!!

That is why I give Kudos to the Karnataka Government for taking such a step, and hope that the bill is passed soon!!