It is an impasse that is beginning to pose huge ramifications for the health sector in Kerala. What began as a sit-in protest in a clutch of private hospitals in Thrissur demanding the implementation of the Supreme Court-approved basic salary of Rs 20,000 per month, has gone out of hand in the past 30 days, by spreading to almost all parts of the state. As the strike completes a month, things have come to such a pass that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has been forced to mediate between the nurses and private hospital managements to break the deadlock.
It is unlikely that the private hospital managements will use this as an occasion to revisit the huge salaries they pay doctors on the one hand and the pittance they pay nurses on the other. Consider this: Many hospitals still pay less than Rs 10,000 to their nurses but they feel compelled to fork out Rs 3 lakh, going up to Rs 7 lakh a month to some of their ‘star’ doctors. Now, about 1.7 lakh nurses working in the nooks and crannies of Kerala have decided that they are the backbone of the private hospitals which take care of 70 per cent of the state’s healthcare needs.
If the nurses decide to stop working, the woes staring Kerala will be of unprecedented proportions. Because, in the last 50 days, infectious diseases in the state have claimed 250 lives, roughly five times more than the lives lost in the 1994 Surat plague. As per official figures, over the past 50-odd days, deaths on account of dengue alone have touched 127, while a deadly cocktail of viral fever, H1N1, leptospirosis, chikungunya, chicken pox and malaria, to name a few, has claimed an equal number of lives.
Yet, there are no alarm bells ringing and a sense of apathy pervades the public—given the slew of sensational matters that keep them engaged. And the result: The state health sector has slipped, if not into a coma, definitely into a state that requires revival measures akin to what is available only to patients in an Intensive Care Unit.