Disjointed Exercise

EARLY this month the father of a young polio-stricken child, waiting at the out-patients' clinic in one of Mumbai's public hospitals, threw the child out of the second-storey window. The child fell to his death and the father was apprehended. He confessed that he had deliberately thrown the boy out, because he was at the end of his tether, having come to the city from small-town MP where he was employed in a food catering place, unable to find the right treatment for his son. There can be no more poignantly telling comment op the state health policy and programmes, After decades of progressively sophisticated immunisation programmes there are still children who are vulnerable to polio; and after millions of rupees have reportedly been spent on the creation of a public health infrastructure with curative services, people have still to trek the hundreds of kilometres to metropolises like Mumbai seeking care, losing their incomes and perhaps their sanity and sense of balance on the way.