Mustafa Idris Okaz HAVING a large number of private hospitals and polyclinics is a clear indication of a lack of medical progress, and not the opposite. In Canada, authorities have started closing down hospitals and reducing their numbers and focusing on providing more primary healthcare centers run by consultant family physicians. A consultant family physician can take good care of you and save you a lot of money because he won't allow you to fall victim to the greed of some hospitals. His motto is always “prevention is better than cure”. One of my friends, who is a consultant family physician, said he never administers any medications to his child when he runs a fever as high as 40 degrees Celsius. He always opts for conventional methods and herbal medicine such as inhaling Vicks (over-the-counter medicine for relieving cough and cold symptoms) or drinking water boiled with mint and cumin. A consultant family physician keeps a record of his patients with information about their medical, genetic and psychological history as well as their illnesses. He is the one who provides other doctors with such information if one of his patients is referred to them. This is what my friend told me. I was impressed with the fact that he is fully aware of the greed of some hospitals that care about nothing but money. He explained to me how some hospitals tend to fleece patients. He said if a patient has a nasal allergy, he will go to see an ear, nose and throat doctor who will prescribe expensive inhalers and medications. If the same patient gets lung infections, he will go and see a pulmonary specialist who will prescribe more expensive medications. The result: The patient will develop kidney, liver and bone complications on the long run because of using these medications. That is why it is important that a consultant family physician should be the one who decides the type of laboratory investigations a patient needs. After all, that is what such physicians do in advanced countries. They run monthly and biannual tests to take precautionary measures and prevent patients from developing new diseases. They usually ask patients to follow a certain diet or take more doses of a certain vitamins to stay healthy. The most important thing is that such physicians can control patients from developing or having cancer. One can imagine the hefty expenses of treating cancer, which could cost the government half a million per patient. In advanced countries, laboratory tests run on a monthly basis only cost the government a few thousand dollars. That is why primary healthcare is important. However, we only go to see doctors here when it is too late and our conditions become incurable.
