Medical College Hospitals in Kerala are centres where the common people get the best treatment without getting exploited. Health workers in medical colleges are often not appreciated for their services. Instead, no one misses the opportunity to criticize them even if there is a small mistake. In effect, this only serves to push even the common people to private treatment centres. Even the patient's relatives will not be aware of medical malpractices in private hospitals. Although it is natural to hear complaints about treatment in the medical college because of the large number of patients, it cannot be overlooked that the treatment that costs lakhs in private hospitals is being done free of cost to BPLs and at a minimal cost to others.

Private companies that supply necessary supplies for surgeries play a significant role in spreading fake news against medical colleges. They often spread many news stories implicating doctors and others who are against their commercial interests. In the past few days, some media had reported that the surgeries at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College Hospital have come to a standstill due to a shortage of stents. This was false news. Kerala Kaumudi had published a factual report prepared by our correspondent KS Aravind in this regard titled '24 Surgeries in 48 Hours'.

The hospital has all the materials required for surgery like stents, catheters, balloons, wire and pacemakers in stock. In the event of a shortage of surgical supplies, it is customary to postpone pre-scheduled surgeries and reduce them to urgent ones. However, the doctors stated that such a situation has not occurred in the medical college in the past few days. It is clear that the news to the contrary was spread to help private companies that supply the surgical equipments. Meanwhile, the government has incurred huge arrears for supplying surgical supplies to private companies, which is not right.

Such controversies are created by the non-disbursement of funds by the government from time to time. The agencies had stopped the supply of surgical supplies in protest against the government's approach. To overcome that, it was decided to allocate 10 crores to IHDB and purchase surgical supplies including stents to 5 medical colleges from the in-house drug bank attached to SAT for one month. Purchase of surgical supplies including stents through IHDB may end the tie-up between suppliers and the cardiology department. These tie-ups are based on commission and other transactions. News was spread that operations has stopped, anticipating that this move would be a threat. In any case, propaganda like this is tantamount to putting roaches in the poor man's porridge.