Presidential folly

Published On: August 31, 2016 12:45 AM NPT By: Republica  | @RepublicaNepal


VVIP treatment abroad
Some kinds of cancers are incurable. A few others can’t be treated in Nepal. But prostate cancer, the kind former President Ram Baran Yadav has been diagnosed with, is not one of them. Almost 50 percent of men above 50 have some form of prostate cancer. While that may sound scary, knowing about the high survival rate can be a great source of comfort. The five-year survival rate for men diagnosed with prostate cancer is a touch over 92 percent. But what happens after five years? The stats, again, are encouraging: the 10- and 15-year survival rates for these men are 93 percent and 77 percent respectively. This is because most forms of prostate cancer are treatable, with radical treatment options like surgery and radiation therapy warranted only in extreme cases. This is why the demand of former President Yadav that he be given financial help for his treatment in the US, and the government’s subsequent decision to heed his plea, are outrageous. The government last week approved Rs 6 million for the purpose, on the top of the Rs 1 million that Yadav spent during his recent trip to India for diagnosis.

But it isn’t hard to see why top government officials so easily agreed. If they had refused to entertain Yadav’s demand, it could set a strong precedent that will be greatly beneficial for the country. But not for the high-ranking government officials, who know that they too will retire some day and if they happen to fall sick while out of office they may not be able to rely on the state to foot their medical bills—not if they today stop the old practice of wanton allocation of resources for medical treatment of VVIPs abroad. They will shamelessly rely on the state even though the private fortunes of these politicians, more often than not, will be sufficient to pay their medical bills. Interestingly, these VVIPs continue to embark on expensive medical tourism even as treatment options multiply in their own country. Even in case of cancer, many super-specialty oncology hospitals, both private and state-funded, have opened up in Nepal in recent times. These hospitals are particularly good at treating run-of-the-mill cancers like prostate cancer and most forms of blood cancer. Hence even relatively well-to-do families these days opt for treatment in Nepal.

But not our VVIPs, who, along with the medical mafia that Dr Govinda KC has been fighting, are doing the most to erode public faith in their own, mostly reliable, medical establishments.  They are also bleeding dry the coffers of a poor state, where the money they are getting could be much better spent, for instance in subsiding costly cardiovascular and cancer treatments for half the country’s population who live under the international poverty threshold of US $2 a day. Time has come to correct this old anomaly and institute a mandatory system of screening whereby each and every VVIP who seeks state help for medical treatment abroad is first evaluated by a team of doctors to determine if the VVIP in question really need to leave the country. In fact, such a team already exists, but our VVIPs routinely ignore it. Making such screening mandatory, in our view, should be among the first few duties of the new health minister.


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