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?