By Kate Wallace, 1/21/2015. Walking into the hospital in Delhi felt like walking into a large luxury hotel. There was marble floors, a movie theatre, a fountain and a Baskin and Robbins. It was very luxurious and felt more like somewhere people come to unwind or go to business conferences than come when they are sick. I feel like this is one of the most prominent examples of the wealth disparity I have seen since comparing this hospital to one of the public ones I saw in Goa is mind-blowing. In Goa I met with a tourist and asked her about her concerns with access to healthcare in India. She was clearly very concerned with the food and water, but said she never got around to buying overseas insurance and was confused when I explained her American healthcare probably wouldn’t cover her if she got sick here. She said if she got sick here she would want to be airlifted home anyways. Generally all the travellers I have spoken to seem to think there is very poor healthcare everywhere here and do not understand the private and public system. For those of you who don’t understand it either: hospitals here are either public or private. Public hospitals are partially funded by the government, so they are less expensive for the patient. Private hospitals are a lot more expensive because the patient has to pay in full or through their insurance.
I’ve been looking into comparing the healthcare here to that back home and have had some interesting findings. Canadian hospitals are all funded through the government, thus they are all “public” and all have equally high standards of healthcare. Of course some are better than others, but generally speaking they all offer the same quality. In America all hospitals require some sort of insurance, thus they are more like the private hospitals here. When comparing prices, the private hospitals here cost about 1/10 that they would in America. This is creating something called “medical tourism,” where people travel from America to get affordable quality healthcare in India. This is an interesting demographic because they are not so rich that they can afford healthcare in the states, but have enough money to travel to India.
As far as quality goes, it is hard to tell since I haven’t received treatment so I can’t tell firsthand, but I have spoken to an American expat who tells me she has an excellent doctor here and finds it’s easier than back home because she can get appointments without having to wait a long time. All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) hospital is the top Medical college in the country. They are also a great hospital, again proving that there is a relationship between education and medical research and quality of healthcare. I have been told that the college is incredibly difficult to get into, with over 35,000 applicants only 77 are accepted. The line up for patients often goes around the whole building, with people camping outside hoping to get seen by a doctor. This is an interesting contrast to the private hospitals where the expat said she likes it because it’s easy to get an appointment. I have always been a supporter of “free healthcare,” or a similar system to what we have in Canada because it only seems right that everyone should have access to help if they are sick or injured. But how would a system like that look in a country with 1.252 billion people? Canada has a population of 35.16 million. Even putting the population difference aside, India brings a different set of social issues to the table. Thinking about how to change the healthcare system goes beyond just healthcare, everything from wealth disparity to poverty to women’s role in society to education to infrastructure to the economy (and I could go on) contributes to the quality and availability of healthcare.
I am volunteering at TripMD while I am here. They aim to make high quality healthcare accessible worldwide. They target expats and travellers, giving them the resources to find healthcare abroad that is the same quality as they would find at home. It’s interesting because so far my research has showed me that there are a lot of positive effects of foreigners coming to India, but foreigners are nervous because they are worried they will get sick and they won’t have access to quality medical attention. TripMD finds the best doctors and connects them to foreigners. This gives foreigners the reassurance they are being taken care of and brings local doctors business. It also on a grander scheme allows more foreigners to come to India which brings money into the economy and as businesses open here creates jobs for local people. Although this organization does a lot of positive work for the community, I can see some things that may be viewed as negative. I have yet to explore in my research the negative effects of globalization, but I know that as TripMD supports foreigners moving to India it also indirectly supports the negative effects of globalization as well. I also found out when I got here that TripMD does not directly benefit local people as the Doctors would only sign on if they were only treating expats. I am very quickly learning that race plays a big role in Indian society. It is a privilege to treat white patients, thus the doctors will only work with TripMD if they are guaranteed to be able to treat white people. I was also explained that the business partner who is white does most of the meetings because people respect him due to the colour of his skin. I was surprised that race related to quality healthcare accessibility. I wonder how this can be overcome and how TripMD or another program could approach the matter differently if they want to make a bigger impact on the local Indian community. This situation really caught me by surprise. We talk about white privilege all the time in school and I understood it as a concept. But I think growing up white and being in the same North American culture all the time I never really understood what it really meant in practice. Being here and confronted with all the priviliges I am given just because of the colour of my skin has really made me think about how racism affects people in so many different ways, from being taken seriously at work to access to healthcare. I expected the wealth gap, education and economics to effect access to healthcare, but never did I expect to see race come into play. Especially not so blatantly.