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I am too good when I am lashing at someone or something; may be because it's easier to criticize. But when I decided to write on this subject, I had to take a while off from the usual behavior. One must not be a cynic always. Doctors are professionals who have learned medicine according to the prevalent research and scientific principles. If we are not to trust them, then whom are we going to trust?

People who account doctors for errors must understand that human beings are prone to errors and doctors are after all human beings. Why we have to treat them like angels? They practice what they have studied in medical books and experimented in labs. If the real situation has a little divergence than what they have experimented, then they must not be blamed for a little misjudgment. Yes, the implications of an error by them can be severe. But I believe one must have a balanced approach.

An average person sees a doctor once in two months period. So if we sum it up for average life of a person (about 77 years), it becomes 462 times an average lifetime. Now out of these 462 times, how many times a doctor has given an improper medicine or improper medical treatment? I believe the average is quite low as compared to the 462 figure.

According to a survey in 2000, 2001, 2002, in US 195,000 patients have died due to medical errors out of a record of 37,000,000 patients. This amounts a total of 0.527% death rate. Is this amount too big? Consider a situation if there were no doctors to cure the patients. The death rate would have been closer to 100%.

The projection and propagation of incidents of mistakes is more than the actual incidents. Of course, when we hear that someone's doctor has left a cotton swab inside his/her belly, it sounds funny or may be alarming for others. But I ask how many such incidents we have come across in our entire life; may be two or three? Five people dead from Dengue Virus a year makes news to the world but 605,480 people dying in year 2006 in South Africa does not count much.

Then, why don't we compare the good and the bad? We don't even have to consider the ratio of life savings by a doctor and the deaths which are caused inevitably by a doctor. It's obvious. There is no match. We criticize them only because we have them in abundance. But let's talk about the third world countries. About half (over 3 billion) of the population of world lives in the third world countries. Here is a little statistics on one doctor' per number of persons' in different

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