Mass sterilisation tragedy: Casting a shadow on India’s healthcare growth story 

Last week, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley singled out healthcare as one of the services that could drive the Indian growth story.

Elsewhere in the country though, the same week, another disturbing development unravelled as initial reports emerged on the death of 11 women at a routine mass sterilization camp in Bilaspur, Chattisgarh. 

The contrast is stark. But if the Government is keen on building its strengths globally as a maker of quality medicines and provider of skilled doctors, it will have to fix its basic healthcare systems at home.  

GMP enforcement 

At ground-zero Bilaspur, the details that emerge trace the all too familiar contours of unhygienic conditions, medicines of suspect quality and questionable regulatory clearances. 

Some of these manufacturing concerns had come up in the pharmaceutical context, when a bunch of India-based companies including Ranbaxy and Wockhardt faced regulatory action in the United States, for transgressions that included possible hair on a medicine and open drains in a manufacturing plant. 

According to reports from Bilaspur, Mahawar Pharmaceuticals, the company that supplied the antibiotic Ciprofloxacin to the sterilisation programme, had in fact been black-listed by the Government years ago. 

A Union Health Ministry official observes that such incidents are aberrations, and drug companies are mandated to adhere to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) norms. But then again, Mahawar, according to reports, had its GMP certification in place as well. 

“I squarely blame the local regulatory authority and the procurement agency,” says Daara Patel of the Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association, a platform for small and medium drugmakers. “Why did they buy from a blacklisted company, what procedures and protocols did they use,” he says, adding that one such incident gives the industry a bad name.

Even as final reports are awaited on the sterilisation tragedy, the incident puts a spotlight on the enforcement of good manufacturing practices, the fact that health is a State subject and that drug regulatory bodies across the country are severely short of hands. 

Medical tourism 

Closely linked to the pharmaceutical world, is the healthcare arena, where Indian hospitals look to attract patients from across the world, on the promise of quality service at a fraction of the cost they would pay in a developed market. 

Would incidents like the Bilaspur tragedy inspire much confidence in the country’s healthcare? 

“There is only one way to look at it, and that is to fix accountability and ensure quality compliance,” says Ratan Jalan, a veteran on healthcare and head of Medium Healthcare Consulting.

Whether it is the fire at Kolkata’s AMRI hospital, newborns being kidnapped in hospitals or the Bilaspur incident, the apathy needs to stop and someone needs to be held accountable, he observes. 

But it may not directly dampen the prospect of overseas patients coming to India, he observes, given the inherent contradiction in the country that is home to both the richest and the economically down-trodden sections of society. 

jyothi.datta@thehindu.co.in

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