The deaths of over 100 newborns at the staterun JK Lon Hospital in Rajasthan’s Kota district since December 2019 is a grim re-run of the Gorakhpur tragedy when more than 70 children died at the BRD Medical College Hospital in 2017. The reasons for both tragedies are the same ~ lack of beds and medical personnel, shoddy equipment, insufficient oxygen and unhygienic conditions. Amid the ongoing political slugfest over the Kota deaths, one thing is clear. No lessons are ever learnt.

The truth is that the appalling state of public healthcare in India is the reason for such incidents recurring with alarming regularity. Cash-strapped government hospitals are constantly handicapped by lack of staff and poor maintenance of medical equipment. Governmental spending on health care in India is, according to some estimates, only about 1.15 per cent of its GDP.

A concerted effort is needed to improve the state of public health in the country. Ironically, India is the favoured destination for medical tourists because private hospitals here offer world-class facilities and medical experts of standing. The contrast with government hospitals is stark indeed. Endless queues, unending waiting lists for vital surgeries, shortage of medicines and life-saving equipment are the familiar litany at state-run medical facilities, even those as prestigious as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the Capital.

AIIMS, which was set up with the intention of being a top-notch referral institution, has now become an overcrowded government hospital for all purposes. The Kota deaths are just the latest in a series of such public health disasters in the country. While UP chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, roundly criticised for the Gorakhpur hospital negligence, tried to turn the tables on the Congress government in Rajasthan and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra of the Congress attacked the BJP’s ‘politics of death’ allegedly to cover up the protests over the Citizenship Amendment Act and questioned the erstwhile state government’s failure to sanction funds sought by the Kota hospital.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot took consolation in the fact that the number of child casualties in the Kota hospital came down to 963 in 2019 from 1260 in 2015 and 1193 in 2016 when the BJP was ruling the state. The BJP sent a fact-finding team and the Centre is dispatching a high-level team to analyse gaps in infrastructure. However, a state government committee has already given a clean chit to the doctors attending on the infants and blamed it on the paucity of oxygen pipelines n the hospital as well as the extreme cold.

The blame game and outrage will continue for some time till another event occupies the headlines. India’s public health tragedy, however, will not be overcome till it is recognised as a cancer that needs to be excised. Mere cosmetic changes to the system will be of no use, it needs a complete overhaul. Ayushman Bharat indeed!