We are driven by a world where everything is sanitised. People are sticklers for cleanliness, where the most common modern-day disease is OCD.
So it kind of puzzles me how is it that we miss out on some of the basics. Washing one’s hands is one of the first things that our parents taught us, and what we in turn have taught our children.
Hygiene is a way of life and mantra in today’s day and age.
It’s natural then that we take these things for granted, right? So, isn’t okay if I get flummoxed, like you will when I recount what all I have seen and where.
The ladies who clean think it is their birth right to wash the bathroom in malls and public places with as much water as they like. They do not dry it and sometimes I have even found footprints on the seat of the toilet.
Some of them even bathe in them which is fine, but the aftermath is for us to put up with.
Change of scene to a small clinic/lab in Fort Kochi. I go for a blood test.
The sister rubs the area on my hand with spirit, then types out a bill for someone. Takes money for the same. Closes the drawer, opens another to take out a band to tie around my upper forearm.
Attends a call, opens a syringe and draws the blood sample. Drops the needle into a square glass bowl, where it floats with many other syringes and then reaches for labels to mark the separate vials.
And yes, she puts a small piece of cotton to stop the blood from oozing out. There was nothing wrong with what happened, specially for a layperson. This clinic is like many others which is a hub of diseases.
Dentists also have to be extremely careful as there are many minor nicks and cuts even during the smallest procedure. I visited a dentist along with my domestic help. While giving the injection and preparing for the extraction, he did not wear gloves.
Afterwards, he did wear gloves but old ones and at some point they came off but he just went right ahead, wrote a prescription and said ‘NEXT’.
Are we to remain silent? Are there any rules that these people need to follow? Don’t we have a right to question? After all it’s our health that is at stake.
The writer is a prominent figure on Kochi’s social scene
