Negligence

Was posted to Under Five Clinic.
My job is to weigh the kids, measure their heights, plot their growth charts, ask about their diet, schedule them for immunization, ask their parents if their child is ill.
Easy job. Stress free.
Senior doctors are also there, to manage more complicated cases, which is however, hardly any.

The first child of the day came. 14-month-old. I weighed him and checked his records. His weight has been been same in his last 4 visits (months). 9kg.
I thought, something must be wrong with the bathroom weighing scale. I set it to zero and weighed again. Same. I put him on the infant weighing scale instead. It showed 8.5 kg.
Whether is it 8.5 or 9, he is definitely underweight. He should be weighing at least 11 or 12 kg. On top of that, his growth curve on the chart has been plateauing since the past 4 months. This is the earliest sign of malnutrition.
I tried to ask the mother about the childs diet, eating pattern, so that I could advice further. I was attempting with my super broken kannada. She couldn't understand me. I tried my hindi, she knows only kannada.

Feeling useless, I seek help from the community medicine postgraduate, who was posted together with me. He looked at the chart, and said, "It's ok. Nothing serious." And he sent both of them off and continue reading his newspaper.
I told him again, "Sir, his weight has not been increasing for 4 months.".
He got a little irritated, "Ya ya, it's ok."

I could do nothing. I was thinking to myself, 'Are you kidding me? What's the point of running an Under-5 Clinic, if you could detect malnutrition at the earliest but do nothing about it, just because you are to lazy to do the already very easy job.

We know many of them are uneducated, or unaware about their children's growth adequacy, nutrition, hygiene, etc. To prevent severe malnutrition which are not treated in its early stage, we do primary prevention, i.e. Growth monitoring. Even health workers are trained to pick up this skill. It is anyway nothing difficult. This it's the main aim of Under-5 clinic, Anganwadis, to tackle this problem at the so-called 'grassroot level'.

But when a qualified doctor, a soon-to-be community medicine specialist, who is sitting in a tertiary hospital, does not bother about spending a little extra time and effort to look into one child's nourishment, do you think others, especially those posted to the rural areas, won't have such similar attitude.

I feel bad for the parents who are willing to bring their children, monthly, for growth monitoring, but not only they are not told about the problem they will be facing, the doctors in whom they trust don't give a damn about them.

How do they expect improvements in healthcare when the attitude of the healthcare provider is so disappointing?