Let us all rise up to the future challenges Goa is facing and boost its ambition to become a premier destination for medical tourism
Dr Joe D’Souza
Goa and its tourism are under pressure due to the economic slowdown and local factors, including the yet-to-be streamlined garbage management system. A lot has been talked about Goa as being a premier destination for medical tourism having facilities on par with international standards made available to foreign visitors for their healthcare needs at affordable and competitive prices.
At the Vibrant Goa summit a few weeks ago Chief Minister Pramod Sawant projected Goa as the destination for information technology and healthcare. He asserted that his government would concentrate on propelling Goa as a salubrious and tranquil holiday destination for both foreign and Indian guests.
Sadly, any intelligent visitor to Goa during the summit would be able to smell all the cock-and-bull yarns spun by the host. As the CM spoke there was news about urban and rural Goa being starved of water, with Panaji, Mapusa and Margao receiving muddy water through the PWD pipelines. The potholes on Goan roads are still a challenge for all commuters at large. The stink at Sonsodo and the bitter Panaji-Calangute sewage and garbage woes and challenges are yet to die down.
With casinos reigning in supreme and river Mandovi under seize, the health and safety of the capital city is at stake. To cap it all, and needless to assert, if garbage, sewage, traffic and water woes weren’t good enough to nail down Panaji and the Panjimites to the lowest ebb of existence, we had hundreds of residents of Goa down with dengue and malaria.
Looming large and staring starkly is the fear that encephalitis, hepatitis and cancer cases are steadily rising in our homeland. Whilst Goans at large are drinking, dining, dancing and sleeping over the grave health threats promoted by our administration, it is only the judiciary that is up in arms to protect the interest of the Goans and Goa. How many of us Goans revolted and stood against the Goa government’s suicidal decision to use the abandoned mining pits to dispose of our garbage and other wastes just a month ago.
Mining regions of Goa are aquifers, extremely rich in water and essential minerals. The illegal and unsustainable mining in Goa has not only covered our agricultural fields with rejects, but also the toxic heavy metals have biomagnified in the food chain and in our bodies. No doubt cancers and respiratory ailments are the order of the day in our state. It is ridiculous that Goans, by and large, are a relaxed and lazy lot, ever willing to succumb to poisoned death, rather than confront the half-baked politicians, who are in governance over us.
When would we realize that as people we have to be medically fit to take up employment? The purpose of this article is not to expose the low IQ of Goan youth, but to impress upon fellow Goans that we never question the IQ of our politicians who rule and those who have ruled us for the last 60 years. I am sure they all would fail miserably if only a written test is made mandatory. No doubt not only Goa, but the entire country is going downhill in terms of economy, social index and general welfare of people. Our politicians would only stand high if corruption and manipulation index are accorded a rating. How can we ever aspire to make Goa vibrant with men of straw leading us?
Our former CM, the Deputy CM and other politicians, who died recently, had made us cough over Rs10 crore on their treatments in foreign hospitals. And now we aspire to make Goa a medical tourism destination. If Vishwajit Rane and Pramod Sawant are unable to make their own colleagues in the Goa Assembly comfortable in Goan public hospitals, how can they ever win in convincing foreigners to come to Goa for its medical tourism? Today we are struggling to keep our air, water, soil, food and feed free of pollutants, adulterants and the contaminants which are all around and killing us.
The Health Minister Rane thinks that by distributing dengue kits, he would be able to control the disease. Goa lost precious lives due to dengue. The kit supplied by Vishwajit Rane is not a treatment aid but purely a diagnostic tool.
Unlike malaria, dengue is caused by a retrovirus. Malaria causing protozoa can be combatted with quinoid drug, but the flavivirus of dengue does attack the human cell by genetic recombination. The AIDS virus attacks the immune system in our body but the dengue virus attacks the cytoplasm of cells, including the red blood cells and therefore adversely disenables us.
Thus rash, bleeding, headache, vomiting are the symptoms. All the organs become susceptible to the attack by the dengue germ. Do Goans know that in our medical college the dengue virus is not isolated and identified for specific treatment, including for its use in vaccine production? Only the IGM and IGC (Immune globulin antibodies) released by our bodies are serotyped by the antigen in the kit. This is not specific and accurate.
To make it easier to understand, it must be said if the antigen in the kit does not correspond to the serum (blood) bound antibodies of the patient, the kit would give a negative result. This is because the kit has protein from a virus, which is not from the virus from Goa. Since the test is indirect the Goan doctors would find it challenging to diagnose dengue accurately in Goan patients. Besides dengue virus cannot be treated with any specific drug.
We have eight IIT and engineering colleges but we do not have a single institute of virology to tackle dengue, hepatitis and other viral ailments. We need to cultivate and use viruses from Goa to immunise our people and not depend on imported kits which are not specific to our ailments.
Let us all rise up to the future challenges Goa is facing and boost its ambition to become a premier destination for medical tourism.
