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Kathmandu Thursday December 13, 2001 Marga 28, 2058.
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‘Exorbitant’
fee by TUTH angers Australian disabled
By Tashi D. Thinley
KATHMANDU, Dec 12 – Romie
John, a 60- year- old Australian, came to Kathmandu on a holiday in the last days of
October. In the course of time, he developed a good impression of the Kathmandu City but
it was all shattered after a month of his stay in Nepal.
At midnight on November 8, 2001
he felt a strange numbness in his arms and had to be rushed to the Tribhuvan University
Teaching Hospital (TUTH) for surgery. But while he was moaning with pain, he says the
doctors were for two hours discussing as to who would pay the bill. "Despite my
assurance that I would pay, they demanded cash before the surgery," says John.
At 5 am in the morning the
doctors finally decided to go ahead with the ‘Embolectomy’, a surgery to remove
clot in a blood vessel, after Lyall Crawford, First Secretary and Consul of the Australian
Embassy in Kathmandu took the assurance of John’s payment.
Recalling the moment John said,
"I know if it had been three hours late, my arms would have been amputated".
According to John, he was told the surgery would cost Rs 40,000.
A team under cardiovascular
surgeon Dr Uttam Shrestha conducted the surgery. After the operation, John was admitted to
the hospital for four days (Nov. 8 - 12) which according to him was Rs 800 per day for a
room. On the evening of November 12, he was discharged from the hospital. But he got the
shock of his life when he went to clear his bill. John was presented with a bill statement
of Rs 130,725. He was charged three times more than what he expected and what he was told.
The discharge statement states
that the surgery was conducted for Rs 120,000 (three times more than the actual cost of Rs
40,000) and the bed charge for a day was Rs 2400 instead of Rs 800. He was asked to pay a
total of Rs 130,725.
When he contacted the surgeons
and the administration, he was told that since he was a foreigner, the hospital fees were
unquestionably more. But John argued that he was born in Calcutta though he has an
Australian passport. When he showed his birth certificate, the hospital administrators
simply said that he had to pay the considerable bill simply because he was white.
Director of TUTH Dr Mahendra
Kumar Nepal says, "He did show us the birth certificate but we only look at the
passport to which it is clear that he resides there in Australia. So we have no
consideration as such."
But John is also an Australian
Disabled Pensioner and is adamant that he will not pay the extra amount that they charged
him for being a "white". "This is sheer discrimination and I want to
clarify this that not all whites are rich," John says.
Meanwhile, Dr Nepal takes a firm
stand that TUTH does have the policy of charging foreigners three times more whether it is
just for first aid or surgery. He said, "The foreigners have health insurance when
they go outside their own country, so it should not make any difference to them whatsoever
the charges are".
The Ministry of Health (MoH)
confirmed that they don’t have any policies on how much hospitals can charge
foreigners. Dr Benu Bahadur Karki, Chief of Policy and Planning at the MoH says, "As
far as I know, there is no such policies like this for the hospitals under the MoH".
But since TUTH is an autonomous
hospital, wherein the board members make the policies, John’s appeal is not taken
seriously. But he says, if nothing happens, "I will take the matter to the
court."
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