Book REVIEW | The good doctor’s submissions

The coronavirus pandemic holds many lessons for India, primary among which is the need for a robust public health system. Dr Samiran Nundy, one of the country’s leading surgeons in the field of gastroenterology and former head of the department of gastrointestinal surgery at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, had painstakingly put together an encyclopaedic book on the ills of the Indian healthcare system. The several lakh crores of the taxpayers’ money which have gone to garnering votes for the next elections could well have been spent on the country’s tottering government healthcare system. Authors Ritu Priya and Prachinkumar Ghodajkar in their chapter titled “The Structural Basis of Corruption in Healthcare in India”, point out some factors that have eviscerated the Indian healthcare system. These create “conditions for an increasing segment of healthcare professionals moving away from the expected moral moorings of healthcare providers and thereby increasing distrust of the profession and healthcare services in society at large.” The book is really a magnum opus on not just corruption but the plethora of ills plaguing the country’s healthcare system, including issues such as the rise of the medical-industrial complex, problems of regulation, government spending, the unholy nexus of doctors and pharmaceutical companies and much more.