Without panicking, one of them checked his pulse and followed it up with cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), an emergency medical procedure for a victim of cardiac arrest. One of them rushed to call a nearby hospital's emergency number from a telephone booth. Within five minutes, an ambulance arrived and the patient was taken to the hospital.
Parag asked them how they had learnt to do all those things in such a situation. They answered there were computer discs and literature at their home explaining what to do in such situations. That made him think about the importance of emergency health education, counselling and general information.
Health experts point out that it will take decades for India to reach the level of health education and infrastructure in developed countries. Our per capita health expenditure is estimated at $23, which is only 6.1 per cent of the gross domestic production (GDP).
As against this, the per capita expenditure on health of developed and developing countries, such as the US ($4,499), Germany ($2,422), Canada ($2,058), the UK ($1,747), Mexico ($3,11) and Brazil ($267) are many times higher, according to an Assocham and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study.
The English barrier
Half of India's population is illiterate and even with the remaining half, those who can read and write English constitute only a fraction. "Since most of the medical information available is in English, a large section of the population is unaware of the diseases and symptoms they are suffering," says C M Gulati, editor, Monthly Index of Medical Specialities (MIMS).
While leaflets explaining the drug and its details are mandatory for drug sale in the US and UK, the same has not been strictly implemented in India. In Europe, even cutting of tablet strips is not permitted to ensure the patient gets basic information on the drug which he uses, he adds.
"Here, more than 90 per cent of doctors do not spend more than five minutes with an out-patient to ensure his hospital or clinic gets the maximum