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By Aqsa Shaikh & Rohin Bhatt
The last few years have been marked by the increasing polarisation of Indian society along religious lines. Islamophobia has been growing in many sections of society, and the Indian healthcare system is not immune to this.
Islamophobia is creeping into medical schools and colleges, and some doctors have openly started pedalling it. Prof Aarti Lalchandani, the former Principal of Kanpur’s Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi Medical College, went on a nearly five-minute-long rant blaming members of the Tablighi Jamaat sect for spreading COVID-19, calling them terrorists and wanting them to be thrown into the jungle. “Send them to jungles, throw them in dungeons. Because of these 30 crores, 100 crores are suffering. There is a financial emergency because of them,” she complained.
The pandemic brought out the ugly head of Islamophobia amongst even healthcare professionals. Dr Apurva Sastry, the author of the Medical Microbiology textbook, had to retract his unsupported allegation that the Tablighi Jamaat was responsible for the cluster of cases and explosive spread of Covid-19 across India after he faced backlash for his unscientific ramblings. Another Microbiologist, Dr Sumit Rai from AIIMS Mangalagiri, mentioned on his LinkedIn profile that if one has to stay in Bharat, one must chant Jai Shri Ram.
This year’s Oxfam Inequality Report noted that over a third of Muslims reported having been discriminated against in hospitals or by a medical professional. This ranged from being denied the release of the dead body of their relatives by the hospitals to women patients being treated by male doctors without a female attendant. Such discrimination is not only a human rights issue but also has a deleterious effect on healthcare outcomes. While discrimination against Muslims is hardly new, the past few months have seen calls for genocide go unpunished. With immensely skewed power dynamics in the doctor-patient relationship, the bias must be addressed.
At the crux of this discrimination lies some doctor’s bias – both implicit and explicit. The bias has led to instances where Muslims and Hindus were put in separate Covid wards and, in some cases, patients complained that they were denied care.
Read more
https://theprobe.in/islamophobia-it-may-be-hard-to-stomach-but-it-does-exist-in-the-medical-profession/