A visit to the OPD of Civil Hospital, Karachi, has left me exhausted, nauseated, incredulous and somewhat in dire shock! There are people suffering by the dozens, no hundreds and the hospital emergency is hell on earth, there is open sewage flowing right next to Bun-kebab vendors and juice stalls, there are pot-holes and dug-up roads going into the mouth of the beast, the entrance to the emergency, and the out patient facility, and as far as the eyes can see there is an undulating sea of unwashed bodies, sick-looking, mauled, and disease ridden people. Patients and their families are sprawled on the road and the foot-paths, there is a rush of madness and every person has a purpose to get somewhere and get there fast.
How can a government hospital like this provide any relief to the people? and of course the ones scaling the premises are none other than the poor and marginal of the society, they are in one way or another society's refuse, rejected, abandoned and left on their own without any recourse and any support.
One would say that at least the hospital provides some kind of medical care to those who are too poor to pay, the philosophy or the belief that some complacent people hold only for the others and generally for the ones who are economically challenged - something is better than nothing. That the poor of the poorest are being attended by the top names in the medical field, as though, why should they? no, how dare the poor demand or expect any better from their governors and leaders.
We, the so called educated people have serious hang-ups, we are hypocrites to the core, nursing a very strict and straight line between what is good and acceptable for us and what the poor ought to be content and happy with and if possible be thankful for. The British left this area more than half a century ago, but we, the kala-sahibs and meams forming the local gentry still believe in the apartheid of the have and have-nots! How we ought to live and what we expect from life is to be very different from what the poorer and uneducated lot are entitled to or should be entitled to.
Why is that so? Is this the case in every country that remained a colony of a European power sometime in the 19th century? Has the class system infiltrated in our society so deeply that we are unable to rid ourselves of this curse, and our thinking, our attitude, and our outlook towards life?
Comments
Post a Comment