Biswas Baral
The curious case of Gagan Thapa
I don’t know Gagan Thapa well. What I
know better is that I want him to continue as my health minister. How many
ministers have there been in the post-1990 democratic Nepal who have done
something worthwhile for the common folks and not directed all their focus on
enriching themselves and their mother parties? Gokarna Bista. Lalbabu Pandit.
Janardan Sharma. Narayan Kaji Shrestha. There aren’t many. This is why when we
have someone like Gagan Thapa in the cabinet we should ensure that he stays put
for at least a few years.
If you want to know what Thapa has
done, you only need to visit Kanti Children’s Hospital at Maharajgunj, which
was until recently among our most mismanaged and dirtiest public hospitals—and
this was a hospital for children. The doctors, nurses and other staff there
were rude, offensive even, to the parents who brought their children there for
treatment. Nor did the hospital staffs seem to have a clue about how to deal
with children. Those of limited means continued to take their children to Kanti
only because they had no other affordable option. If you have long been
used to this sorry state of Kanti Hospital, you will be shocked at its almost
overnight transformation today. Its premises are now clean, its medical
personnel courteous and if you take your child there the doctors will treat the
kid as one of their own—as fathers of three different children have testified
to me recently. A year ago, if you took your child to Kanti, you would have to
wait for four or five hours before you could even see a doctor. Today, if you
go, your child will get immediate attention. The transformation is so complete
that visitors today have to pinch themselves.
Upon inquiry, you learn that Minister
Thapa these days deploys plain-cloth ‘spies’ to check if hospital staffs are
doing their jobs well. If these spies find someone cutting corners, the
offender is immediately reported and faces departmental action, or worse. All
of them are thus constantly on their toes and their best behavior, for they
never know which visitor masquerading as a panicked parent is actually the
dreaded spy. Now think of what could be achieved if such spies are
deployed at all our public hospitals and doctors and nurses and cleaning staff
there are always forced to put their best foot forward. Better still, think of
a system that will ensure, long after Thapa is gone, that this kind of covert
inspections will be continued in perpetuity. This is exactly what Thapa intends
and this is why he has repeatedly said that the kind of institutional changes
he envisions will take some time to take root.
Minister Thapa is in fact working on a
raft of measures—making the presence of doctors mandatory at public hospitals,
regulating the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, increasing the access of poor
people to healthcare, among other worthy things—all aimed at ensuring each and
every Nepali citizen’s right to quality healthcare. And yet Thapa is reportedly
being shunted aside in the next cabinet reshuffle. In return for its
support of the tottering Pushpa Kamal Dahal government, Bijaya Gachachadar’s
MJF (D) party apparently wants the ‘lucrative’ health portfolio. Lucrative
because a health minister can easily pocket hundreds of millions by approving a
new medical college in Kathmandu, or by awarding a contract to supply basic
medicines to public health centers to a cherry-picked bidder. Since this modus
operandi of health minister has been the norm, few questions would be raised.
It is easy to be a corrupt minister in Nepal, and much harder to stay clean
with so much muck flying around. Thapa is among that rare breed of ministers
who are both clean and efficient. If we want genuine change in Nepal, these are
the folks we should be promoting. For they are not just good administrators;
they are, in fact, change agents. Whenever I am ill, I go to a private
hospital, always, for small and big ailments alike. But I keep hearing about
how our public hospitals are making progress under Thapa’s close watch. So the
next time I have some health problem, I might very well go to Bir Hospital or
Institute of Medicine (IOM). If I find their service satisfactory on this
maiden visit, I will go there again, and again, and again, till it becomes a
habit.
It is a shame that Dr Govinda KC has
had to repeatedly put his life on the line to effect what should be
commonsensical health reforms. Now out of pure chance we have one of his true
acolytes as our health minister. He needs and deserves the support of each and
every Nepali. Hopefully the prime minister has enough sense left in him not to
remove Thapa and thereby earn widespread public opprobrium.
The writer is the op-ed editor at
Republica. He can be contacted at biswas.baral@gmail.com
MyRepublica
21/03/2017
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