By Deepa Chandrasekharan, [ Friday, August 19, 2006  ]

"Assam tea leaves cultivated in Australia…". ‘Made outside India’ has become a quick reason for anyone to grab a bag of anything.

Juxtapose a duffel of affordable tea leaves from Assam with an undersized flaunty attaché of leaves from the Land of the Kangaroos and we will still rate the second as exotic.. though now you will need to ransack an encyclopedia to find that part of the country where they do cultivate tea leaves if at all they do. 

Forget the tea leaves… and let’s cogitate on more thought provoking issues. Medical field is one arena wherein ‘Foreign returned doctors’ are always considered a step ahead of the medical practitioners in India. Be it the Placements, Consultancy, marriage market.. there’s always a conspicuous distinction. What is the basis for this callousness? More important; is it worth it.

Well, in some cases, may be.. say in a marriage market where status and bank balance in dollar, euro, pounds etc might sounds more musical to the ears. But what about Consultancy and placements to hospitals. I would like to put in a real life experience. A dear one was hospitalized and after close to 2 weeks in the hospital bed, bottles of IV and antibiotics, the doctor emerged dazed, saying that ‘I am observing him’ and this might be a case of Typhoid Relapse or Malaria or something else.. 

Now that was too much for me. How can someone just say that and walk away.. they are the people who are supposed to find the cause and show me the cure. Cursing deep within, I dialed my cousin who was in Australia for the past 10 years or more and had earned quite some degrees. But the only thing feeling that mattered then was that he would be more knowledgeable than the medics here. His acknowledgement on the symptoms weaved a wave of relief.

But what he said next put me in shock. 

He said that, the books indeed gave detailed analysis of all these symptoms, but never, after leaving India had he attended even one single case of a disease like Typhoid or Malaria. Here he was, a very well qualified doctor who visits India occasionally to counsel the medicos here. And what he said next was indeed a food for thought.. ‘the medical practitioners in India are getting to deal and fight with so many new types of viruses that their practical knowledge on the case would be any day better than what he can offer as a consultant advice…’. He told me to trust my doc.

And about my dear one.. two weeks and half at the hospital he’s back home.. agile and kicking.

Next time, I get to select my physician I wouldn’t spent much time on the length of foreign degrees.

Think, high time we start looking at Quality instead of the brand tags that follow…

Some food for thought…?

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