Physician, heal thyself!

Haven’t you always wondered at the inordinately high level you have to climb on to before you can have an x-ray or a scan? Is there a secret golden rule followed by hospitals which demand that a patient who is aged, or who has some locomotor problems, must suffer that much more before the cause of their ailment can be assessed?

An attempt was recently made by some friends of mine, to conduct a survey of accessibility features in various hospitals, by requesting them to answer a questionnaire that had been prepared. The results were neither reassuring nor surprising:

• 98 hospitals were approached for this purpose.

• 64 of them agreed to answer the questionnaire, and although some responses seemed to be at some variance from what the volunteers taking the questionnaires saw, they had to take the questionnaires with the answers provided - without asking questions.

• 34 hospitals refused to answer the questionnaire as they did not have the provisions asked about in the questionnaire. But the surveyors have no proof of this! Some of these 34 hospitals could well have some of these accessibility features.

• Of the 64 that did respond to the questionnaire, there were three groups, each of more or less the same size, which could be described as being rather inaccessible, moderately accessible, and quite accessible.

This is just the sort of issue that Dr. Satendra Singh, another disability activist friend of mine, excels at bringing to the attention of courts or other appropriate powers that be, and forcing them to do something about it. 

How about it, Satendra?

To tip or not to tip

This is not just a rhetorical question; it is a decision I writhe over making every time I have to use a plane. (Sorry for reverting to one of my pet topics.) You see, I use a (dry) battery operated wheelchair. But whenever I fly, I have to check in my own wheelchair, answer numerous questions regarding the possible danger to the aircraft in carrying my wheelchair, and then transfer to one of the wheelchairs used by the airline to transport people with locomotor disabilities.

The Director General of Civil Aviation had uploaded a draft Civil Aviation Requirements http://dgca.nic.in/misc/draft%20cars/D3M-M1_Draft_July2013_.pdf, according to (section 4.1.8 of) which, passengers who prefer to use their own wheelchair shall be permitted to use it provided the wheelchair conforms to identified guidelines, and the wheelchair returned to enable transfer of the passenger from the seat directly into his/her own wheelchair. That would be my idea of Nirvana - to be able to breeze through the airport independently without needing some poor guy to push me. (And, it would be much nicer to have admiring glances at my wheelchair zipping along, as against barely concealed looks of pity at my state!)

As it is, I have to check in my wheelchair at the time of checking in (after having removed the delicate joystick from it and stowed in a suitcase (deliberately chosen, only for this purpose, to be larger than would have otherwise been needed), and then transferring into one of the wheelchairs povided by the airline. And when I get to the destination, the checked-in wheelchair is brought to the conveyor belt where the bags come. After fixing some temporary dislocation the wheelchair invariably suffers while in transit, we then fix the joy-stick to the wheelchair, and get on our way.

But the point of the story is not my wheelchair, but the attendant provided by the airline to push the wheelchair provided by them. Invariably the question arises as to whether to tip the attendant, and if so, how much. On the one hand, one feels sorry for the poor chap needing to push me long distances, up and down slopes (in reverse in the latter case), ... On the other hand, it is their job, and not everybody can casually spend up to almost three hundred rupees just on tips for each flight (counting tips at both ends). My daughter says I should not tip them, as they tend to then demand such a tip, and treat passengers in a manner consistent with the tip they are likely to receive from the `fare'. I have many times, found the attendant not willing to take a tip in front of superior officers of their airline.

Of late, I have been flying the airline Indigo whenever possible, because they have ramps rather than steps so that I can be pushed all the way into the craft. The icing on the cake at my latest flight in Indigo was the response of the attendant, when offered a tip, after having taken us all the way to the pick-up point, and loaded our suitcase and my wheelchair into the van waiting for us: `No sir, this is free service from Indigo'!

It will help in the process of deciding whether or not to tip if passengers were told at check-in , that in keeping with airline policy (if that is indeed the case) , they should not tip the attendant.

Fingers Crossed

There was an event organised yesterday by the Citizen consumer and civic Action Group (CAG) of Chennai which I had received a very cordial invitation (from one of the trustees of this CAG) to attend. It was to a lecture titled `Nature Without Borders' and held at Sivagami Pethachi Hall, which is one of the few auditoria in Chennai where I attend plays, as one only has to negotiate some three shallow stairs. Initially mistaking the title for something to do with `Barrier-Free Environments', I told my hostess that I would come with my wheelchair, and she asked me to please do, promising whatever assistance I might need. I later discovered that I had been mistaken in connecting the talk to the kind of barriers I had in mind. Nevertheless, I thought it might not hurt to `make an appearance with my wheelchair', if at least to enlist some possible sympathy/help from people in influential positions. in trying to render some of these places accessible.

One of the first people I met ws a charming lady who had retired from the Madras High Court, and had been a former trustee of CAG. When a couple of guys helped carry my wheelchair in while I hobbled out of it and up the step into the auditorium, the hall was dark as the power had gone and the generator had not yet kicked in, so I sat in my wheelchair in the passage between the door and the nearest seat where this former judge was seated. It did not take much to launch into my gripes about how little it would take to organise a couple of temporary lightweight ramps which could be kept in place when needed, so one could wheel right in without anybody having to help. (See http://differentstrokes-vss.blogspot.in/2013/04/following-robert-bruce-example.html for what I mean by this!) I publicised my other pet peeve about my being unable to go the Museum Theatre, a quaint ambience to stage plays in, that is much favoured by actors - but which also has a surfeit of steps. And she said she had stopped going to the Museum Theatre, wishing to be kind to her knees which were getting no younger. Egged on by the sympathy, I said even the Music Academy, the favoured haunt for Carnatic music concerts, left a lot to be desired. Stung to the quick, she said she would use whatever clout she had there to render it fully accessible.

I also spoke to my hostess who promised to try and do something, and even suggested a few places I might want to write to, in order to increase the probability of my exercises having any effect. All in all, it had been a good end to the last working day of the week!