Annikkki has been complaining of a skin / allergy discomfort for a long time. And she has been self conscious about it although any skin rash could only probably be viewed with a microscope. She has tried many remedies but claimed that nothing worked. She wanted an allergy test, but I found that allergy tests can only be done on a doctors orders.We asked friends and my cousin gave us the name of a top specialist in Mumbai. A call revealed that no appointments were possible during the time we were in Mumbai.
I told Malathi. She said she would attend to it. 
Dr. Ashok with his wife, Malthi and their two boys,Darshan and Disanth (some years ago)
Her husband is the "Doctor of Dharavi". Dr. Ashok Khembahavi works from 10:30 to 14:00 hours and again from 16:30 to anytime the last patient arrives in his small Dharvi clinic, 6 days a week. To get him to join even for a family get together is something historic. Considering that he charges Rs. 10 per patient (€ 0.15) and even that most do not have, so are FREE, shows that he is truly one carrying out a noble profession. And to top it, besides being a general practitioner, he is a skin specialist!
Yesterday evening at around 18:30, this God's gift to humanity, arrived at our doorstep. The minute he saw Annikki, he arrived at his diagnosis. After speaking to her confirmed it. He probably sees more patients in a month that a Finnish doctor sees in his entire lifetime.
I have invited Dr. Ashok, as he is fondly known to his patients, to come and stay with us in Finland, a country that his wife, Malathi adores. He has promised to do that.
Dr. Ashok worked in the Congo for two years. His clinic was set inside a factory compound. He told me about the deadly Malaria mosquitoes of Africa. No wonder, when my friend, Kamu, goes there, he gets back to Finland and is taken directly into the hospital. Kamu is presently in Zambia!)
Such a human being as dr. Ashok is so rare in this Universe. I hope and pray that God preserves him as the people of Dharvi need him more than anything else.
Thank you Dr. Ashok. We are humbled by your visit to us.
"He probably sees more patients in a month that a Finnish doctor sees in his entire lifetime."
ReplyDeleteI have to admit that this sounds a bit unrealistic to me. If we assume that an average Finnish doctor works for 30 years, 9 months a year, 20 days a month and 8 hours a day and attends patients on 30 minute intervals, he (or she) attends 129600 patients total, if I calculated correctly.
In order for dr. Ashok to reach this, he would have to attend a patient every 2 minutes, if he worked 24/7 for 30 days. I suspect he would collapse after about one week of no sleep, drink nor food :-)
Am I nitpicking? Probably. I have just heard too much criticism from people that Finnish doctors just take enormous wages and hardly do any work at all. It is true that there always are rotten apples in a basket, but most of our doctors are hard-working people who want only good for their patients. Being an orderly I see quite much what patients don't and according to my observations I have to say that this fine Finnish bureaucracy has forced doctors to be too much of paper-pushers and certificate-writers instead of clinicians treating patients, which is indeed a shame. Pekka Vuoria's book "Missä lääkäri" tells quite exhaustively why there are so few doctors in our outpatient clinics nowadays and why they have so little time to their patients nowadays.
Yours, Timo
Dear Timo,
ReplyDeleteYour logic would be good except that Finnish doctors do not work 8 hours seeing patients. It is not more than 3 hours. Secondly, if you have ever been to the outpatient department you will note that the time per patient is about an hour to 2 hours considering that a Finnish doctor does nothing till he gets all the reports, blood, X-ray, MRI, ultrasound, or anything else. I have waited with an 80 year old lady for 7 hours! I had to wait 2 days to be diagnosed with "chicken pox"! Annikki did that by just looking at my boils!
Ashok does work 24/7 and usually 12 hours per day. He also handles groups of patients. His time per patient is usually a couple of minutes as he quickly passes his diagnosis to his compounders who then handle the paperwork, prescription, etc.
To give you an example, when he walked into our home in Mumbai, Annikki did not have to say anything. He took one look at her face, gave his diagnosis and prescribed the medicine - all in less than a minute! Later, over tea, they had a longer personal discussion, which was to allay Annikki's fears, etc. But in his clinic that does not happen.
Next, I was using a typical Indian trait, exaggeration, to make a point!