SINGAPORE patients, even subsidised ones, have it good – when compared to those in Nepal. So do doctors.
The public hospitals in Nepal are crowded, not very clean and the staff harried.
In the private sector, where patients might have to pay half a months’s salary for a simple treatment, things are marginally better.
Dr Basant Pant, the neurosurgeon who has been keeping an eye on conjoined Nepalese twins Ganga and Jamuna since their separation and return to Nepal in 2001, is a private sector specialist.
He works a 14-hour day.
By 8 am, he’s at the Kathmandu Model Hospital where he heads the neurosurgical department. In the afternoon, he’s at the Norvic International Hospital where he ends the day at about 10 pm.
He does this six days a week. On Saturdays, the weekend day off in Nepal, he would pop into the hospitals for a quick check on patients in the wards.
Dr Pant had promised The Straits Times team an interview during our short stay in Kathmandu, but had difficulty slotting it into his busy work day.
After keeping us waiting for an hour, he suggested we don scubs – or surgical gear – and interview him in the operating theatre.
So there we were, in gowns and masks, told not to touch any of the sterile equipment, talking to the doctor as he was removing the tumour in millimetre bits.
He needed to remove a two centimetre tumour from a patient's spine.
During the half hour interview, we also had the chance for a close-up look at the exposed spinal cord and the small piece of remaining tumour stuck to it, which has caused some paralysis in the patient.
When we left the hospital at about 9pm, Dr Pant was just taking a break, leaving his assistant surgeons to close up the wound, before he returned to ensure that all was well.
Definitely an interview not about to be forgotten anytime soon.
Salma Khalik (left) interviews
Dr Pant in the operating theatre.
ST Photo: Lim Wui Liang