A fool.............!

A fool…….!

I was declared a ‘fool’ in my friends circle to have chosen Okhaldhunga to practice medicine. In this age, where all the doctors are vying for the lucrative job offers in US or UK, I was definitely a ‘fool’ to drive my career in the back gear and land up in a place like Okhaldhunga. When my other colleagues were being dazzled by the colorful nights of Manhattan, I was fumbling under the darkness of the candlelight in this place. When my friends are flashing their newly introduced high tech palm with built in 3 megapixel digital camera with cellular phone with 3G technology, I had to walk half an hour to the nearby ‘bazaar’ to make a single phone call. When my friends are sick of having the fast foods from KFC or McDonalds, I was chewing the rubbery ‘rotis’ made of local millet. When my friends are in touch with the whole world by their fingertips with their broadband connected internet in their computers, I was listening to the news in the out of tune ‘Radio Nepal’. When my friends are shopping out in the sophisticated malls and paying checks with their latest Debit cards, I was waiting on the way for the villagers to come and sell their agricultural products. When my friends are spending their time in the huge studio flat in one of the skyscraper of the west London, I was living in this tin-shedded mud house. My friends must have doubted about my sanity when they knew how I am leading my life in this ‘mero pyaro Okhaldhunga’.
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It was Okhaldhunga where people came to thank me with the biggest cucumber in their field.
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But little did my friends know that it was Okhaldhunga where I experienced the total satisfaction of saving others’ lives. It was Okhaldhunga where I developed the guts to explore the abdomen of other people to sew the hole in their guts. It was Okhaldhunga where people came to thank me with the biggest cucumber in their field. It was Okhaldhunga where I could tell the toddlers crawling in the street dust ‘it was me who took you out of your mother’s womb’. It was Okhaldhunga where I spent the sleepless night when one of my favourite patients was breathing last breath of her life and watched death taking its toll in front of my own eyes . It was Okhaldhunga where I learnt how important communication is to man and mobile phones are just a luxury. It was Okhaldhunga where I realized that staying in the dark for few hours of ‘load-shedding’ is not a big deal as millions of people in my country have never seen the electric light in their whole life. It was Okhaldhunga where I sweated to take out lumps and bumps from their bodies so that they don’t have to fly to big cities for that cosmetic surgery which they thought could grow to become a cancer. It was Okhaldhunga where I grew up as a doctor and as a human, otherwise I would have been an ignorant brat for my whole life. Okhaldhunga has been my ‘guru’. I am proud to learn the basics of life and ground realities of living in this place.

At the same time, I feel sorry for people’s conception of measuring the success in terms of their time spent in a foreign land. Your foreign degree is considered as a feather in your cap and the very own degree earned in your own country is treated as the patch stitched to cover holes in your pants. We never try to think the problem in the broader term. The ‘big’ countries are in a way poaching the ‘cream’ brain of our country and we are happily clapping while they disappear in the oblivion of the foreign land. Government is happy with the revenues they earn from these foreign labors and financial bigwigs term it as a boost in the national economy. The so-called ‘brain-drain’ is seriously affecting the health sector at its most. If this trend continues we will be left behind with the doctors graduated with a mediocre degree from the commercial universities where certificates are exchanged with ‘vodkas’.

How long this place will keep on focusing only on primary care? How long Okhaldhunga will keep on referring patients to higher centres for specialist care? How long people in and around Okhaldhunga will have to wait to see a ‘colorectal surgeon’ to work in their local hospital? How long will it take for a neurosurgeon to come and work happily in Okhaldhunga? How long will it take to convert Okhaldhunga hospital into a multi-specialty hospital?........I can tell you definitely that it will take another two centuries for all these dreams to materialize. Thanks to the brain drain. Rajiv Gandhi once said ‘Brain drain is better than brain in drain – probably the most anti-nationalist statement delivered by the most nationalist hero of this region.
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Government is happy with the revenues they earn from these foreign labors and financial bigwigs term it as a boost in the national economy.
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I was not pleased at all reading the news of the second biggest trauma centre in the entire SAARC countries being construced in the premises of Bir Hospital in Kathmandu. Probably none of the trauma patients in Kathmandu have died because of lack of medical treatment. I would have been overjoyed if they had empowered the primary health centres located near the highways. I was not pleased to know about the big surgery and millions of dollars spent to separate the inseparable conjoint ‘Ganga’ and ‘Jamuna’ by the group of neurosurgeons in Singapore, that gave the surgeons fame in the medical fraternity and the parents two retarded children. I would have pleased if they had established the water treatment plants in villages to protect thousands of children dying from diarrhea. I was not impressed when the topmost neurosurgeon of the country flew to Pokhara to operate on an Israeli person and hogged the limelight. I would have respected him if he had done so to every Nepalese people who break their spines. Giving test tube baby to the infertile couples, who can afford, is a noble job. Our pioneer gynaecologists who claims to have done it ‘first time in Nepal’, must have earned millions of rupees by that but he would have earned millions of ‘thanks’ if he had done something to help the dying newborn babies who dies only because their mothers did not know its important to have someone skilled to work as birth attendant while they were born. I felt nauseated when I read that Nepal now introduced a new technology of studding a diamond in the teeth to make their smile glitter. I would have felt content if someone had distributed tooth brush to the children in villages, which would have made the millions of smiles brighter. I was not flattered when my friends called me a ‘fool’; I would have felt grateful if they had patted by back……..