Editor,
It was with great jubilation that we received the news of the MHIS (Megha Health Insurance Scheme) to benefit private citizens. However, our joy was short lived as we are now told that mental illnesses are not covered under this scheme. As a medical doctor, the Chief Minister is aware that Depression which is at No. 4 now is expected to be the 2nd most common cause of disability worldwide by 2020. Severe mental illnesses’ worldwide prevalence is 1% would mean that there are at least 30,000 people living with severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia in Meghalaya who need constant psychiatric care. Substance abuse, Childhood, Adolescent and other disorders affect up to 10% of our population and if we take all these together it would mean that a significant number of our people would be deprived of their right to basic health care. It is a different matter that 90% of the mentally ill in India have no access to mental health care but that is no reason why it should be so in our state.
Stigmatisation and marginalisation of the mentally ill is the order of the day and even the official website of the Government till very recently did not care to mention mental health care institutions as part of the health infrastructure in the state. In a supposedly predominantly Christian state which does not respect even the most important days in the Christian calendar we cannot expect the Christian spirit of loving and caring for our fellow suffering brethren – especially those who are mentally ill. This stigmatisation and marginalisation extends to the care givers also – adding to the frustration and inertia in discharging their responsibility.
Do the mentally ill who have no voice at home or in society have to continue to live out their days in anonymity and lack of care? Or does it take a PIL ( like in the case of shifting mental health patients from the erstwhile Mawlai Jail) to make our bureaucracy and legislators accept that someone in their own family is availing of or will have to seek relief from a mental health care facility? (current research says 1 in 4 families by 2020 will have a member of the family suffering from mental illness; 1 in 4 women while 1 in 7 men will suffer from depression in their lifetime).
Do we the residents of Meghalaya need to be insured even at this small sum to avail of the facilities of the state? Common sense would have us believe that it is the duty of the state to provide free care and medicines to the poor. Insurance would be required only for treatment at private institutions, if government institutions are unable to provide the level of care required. Does this mean that Government servants with fat salaries be provided these facilities free of cost and even referred for treatment outside the state at government expense while the poor are expected to pay this SMALL amount to avail of government services which are rightfully theirs free of cost?
I suggest that the your paper request readers to respond to this flagrant disregard of their rights and to pressure our elected representatives to apply their minds instead of blindly accepting what may turn out to be other than so called relief for the poor.
Yours etc,
Dr. Sandi Syiem,
SANKER,
Via email
Comfortably numb are we!
Editor,
Flipping through the newspapers in the current times has become depressing as not a single day passes without reading a report about a ‘Rape Case’. Same goes for the electronic media where horrific reports about rape constantly disturb the mind. But do these reports have any effect on any individual of this so called civilised society. A simple observation compels me to say that the regularity of such incidents has triggered the process of habituation. For most of us today a vicious rape case report gets condensed to a simple piece of information. Who knows may be in some corner of our minds we even associate the event with a scene in a movie, which we can gladly forget.
Media has been reporting rape cases and the plight of the victims relentlessly but that does not seem to induce any sensitivity among the people. Laws are being introduced to punish the perpetrators of such inhuman crimes but needless to say the justice system has its own shortcomings. The administration which is the protector of the common man has also displayed reckless behaviour time and again. Electronic media has been reporting how the police tried to hush the matter by offering a petty sum to the father of the five-year-old girl who was confined and raped allegedly by her neighbour in the national capital. Also the men in uniform ‘advised’ the father to “thank god that your daughter is alive”. Such high level of professionalism deserves applause most certainly. Whereas people are demanding capital punishment for the merciless barbarians, but irony is who will punish whom?
These incidents have to stop or else very soon women of this society will be compelled to shut themselves in the house. Are we numb to this evil wrenching the heart of this country, or only when a similar incident happens in our own houses will the slumber break?
Candle light marches and hunger strikes may give a voice to the cry of the victim but it is certainly not an answer to the problem. Police, Prosecution, Parents, Teachers and every single member of the society have to be vigilant 24×7. There is no one, but us to be blamed for what is happening to the girls around us. Values have faded away and mayhem will soon spread.
Yours etc,
Piyashi Dutta,
Via email