Apr 19, 2006 02:58 PM
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(Updated Apr 19, 2006 02:58 PM)
Sometime last year I had the misfortune of falling for trap that Dr Batras, so called ''Positive Health Clinic'', which is actually a trap that has been laid out for the people of this country.
The entire story goes like this. My wife had some hair related problems, which was diagnosed as Alopecia by couple of doctors that we had consulted. Falling for the advertised miraculous treatments, we went to Dr Batras clinic in NOIDA. Where we were interviewed, and the person at the reception, even before we met with a doctor, told us that we will have to buy one year “package” for treating this problem. Some other person also met us and convinced us that to completely cure Alopecia, one would need to undergo a long-term treatment, and one year package for this would cost us Rs. 6000. Not finding any other option we decided to go for this package (Please note that they do not provide services to anyone who wants to go for a monthly or less than a year kind of package).
After completing the formalities and making the payment, we were shown to a so called doctor, who barely seemed to be out of college. She asked some questions from my wife and prescribed some medicines, which we never got to know, as the prescription is never handed to the patients, and it is directly sent to the medicine counter, where the “meethi golees” are packed and given to the patient, which does not mention the name or ingredients of the packet. But, I must commend these people for the immaculate packaging of their medicines, state of the art machinery and tamper proof packing. My wife took the medicines regularly, but even after six months, there was no improvement in the condition, in fact, the problem had aggravated and the there was more hair loss than she had earlier. despite taking the medicines regularly. When we brought this to the notice of the doctor, she told us that this was normal and nothing to worry about, and at this point of time, she also said that Alopecia is not completely curable, so it may recur while she was still on medication, which was contrary to what they had said initially.
Anyways, after a couple of more months passed, and with no improvement. We asked for consultation with a senior doctor, after a lot of follow-up, we were given an appointment with one Dr Manna, whom they called as senior, but personally I felt that he would be barely a day above 25 years. When we told him about the problem, he tried to convince us that everything was normal and this was expected, and he asked us to renew our “subscription” for the next year also, even without trying to resolve our queries/concerns.
When I asked him about the causes of this disease/problem, and the steps taken to find out the underlying cause of the problem, he simply said that this was an “autoimmune” disorder, and they do not need to conduct any test or anything to determine the cause, because they are apparently the experts in this. When I asked him, do they give the same medicine to all patients of alopecia? To which he responded in negative and said that it depends on the underlying cause of each person. So when I told him that they never tried to figure out the underlying cause of the problem in my wife’s case, and they are simply trying to fool people into leading that they are trying to cure, and rather than physiological treatment, they are using the psychological approach, and typically use hit and trial methods to treat, he got agitated and started shouting that what do you know about this disease, which obviously resulted in agitation at my end too.
When I gave him some gyan, which I had gathered from various Websites, he simply refuted those and said that all information available on the Web is false, and I had inaccurate information. This is the first time; I’ve seen anyone in the service industry shouting at the customer, and that too just to cover up their devious methods.
Finally in the end, he asked my wife to come to the clinic next day and pick up the medicines personally prescribed by him, which she did, but as before, these too turned out to be regular ''sweet pills''
After this I’ve spoken to a couple of skin specialists, who’ve told us that Alopecia is one problem, which heals by itself, even if no medicines are taken. The cause for this trouble can be attributed to different factors, like stress, low hemoglobin count, high esinophillia count, and various other factors, and there is no permanent cure to this problem, it can recur again if something goes wrong with the body.
The best part of this entire episode was, around the eleventh month, we received a call from the head office of Dr Batras clinic, and they enquired if my wife had renewed her “subscription” for the next year. Imagine they had the cheek to call us up and then ask us for renewal, and at no time during this call they asked about the improvement in her condition, or our experience with their treatment.
This leads me to believe that these days healthcare is hardly a concern for the businessmen that we see in the industry in the form of doctors and specialty clinics. I have been taking homeopathy medicines for quite some time, and never had to pay more than 100 rupees, for medicines for a month. It’s obvious that the common citizen has to pay for the lavish infrastructure and loads of staff at each of their “branches” and obviously add to the ''Positive'' account balance of Dr Batra.
