Dear Health Minister,
Can that 523-word apology that you have been personally circulating through WhatsApp and Facebook via fellow Ministers and MLAs in Goa Assembly undo the damage that your Health Department did to Januz Gonsalves? No, it can’t. Can your final apology for the “insensitive attitude of the Head of Department of Forensic Medicine Dr Edmundo” hide the fact that he was on his third extension as HOD (given by your own Government) and disconnect with the morgue medical processes? Can your apology absolve GMC Medical Superintendant’s role in this entire episode, that he is being cleverly protected?
This entire episode smacks of a system not just led but also architected by you that is driven by big-ticket announcements, pompous public appeasements but lacking in basic addressing to the health sector. Health has become another Revenue, TCP, GSIDC or even IPB. Electronic tagging of bodies, upgrading of health facilities at Aldona’s ‘Primary’ Health centre and even posting a 108 Ambulance – the announcements flowed as a knee-jerk reaction, why didn’t this happen before Januz’s mishap? Why should your constituency of Valpoi or that of your erstwhile family at Sanquelim get a swanky hospital each but Aldona get an upgrade after a sad incident? How many disappearing bodies from Goa Medical College (Goa’s premier healthcare teaching institution) Morgue and deaths in our remote villages will it take to ensure that quality basic and primary healthcare reaches them?
In all your accent on super-specialities during both your stints as Health Minister, you have been making the Health Department compete with Hospital Mega-Groups trying to emulate them. But if the Goans don’t get quality GPs why do we deserve the super-specialists? But coming back to the morgue, it was your publicity driven Government that in 2013 inaugurated ‘India’s largest morgue’ ironically on Liberation Day. Ironically because till then the state of our dead was a horrifying experience; left to your Department at GMC. The inauguration of that swanky new facility was supposed to have made things easier. But then your super-duper driven Health Department wouldn’t know. What you definitely should answer the people of Goa is that in the light of this incident what is the state of other bodies lying in GMC and other Morgues under Health Department of Government of Goa. Have you done the audit of the state of the facility or the condition of the bodies that are lying in the morgue? The supports systems like uninterrupted power supply and pest control would also be as important as CCTV coverage of the premises. Most importantly, tell us the truth about Fr Bismarque Dias’ body lying over there?
Dear Minister, please don’t politicise emotions. The denial of the opportunity to see a dear departed for one last time is a shock and pain that no amount of political promises and tokenism can replace. The conscious effort to make your views go viral through social media and instant messaging smacks more of a political purpose than walking the talk on improving Goa’s services. You have the support of the people (that you so eagerly want to discuss and seek, in your private and public exchanges with Goenkars) but the pathetic condition of our PHCs, UHCs and the non-fortunate parts of the GMC does not betray that enthusiasm.
For the record, you have ignored the upgrade of teaching facilities at GMC and reducing it to a post office or dispatch office to send patients to private hospitals as our students and teaching faculties’ quality remains questionable. Under your swanky and shiny leadership, basic healthcare has been completely ignored. And yes, the Government has tactically and systematically allowed the fall of modern medicine in the state where cross-practice has been institutionalised in the Health Department itself. Of course, the numerous health department related procurement and cronyism shall soon be known to the people of Goa.
The basic question then remains, is the definition of healthcare only about token appeasement? No. Mr Minister this one is beyond apology. This was criminal and Goa shall treat it so.
