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Ras Adiba tries hard to convince she did right

Ras Adiba Radzi, on a public relations offensive, insists, in interviews with the Malaysian media from her hospital bed in Sydney she is incapacitated as she is. She would donate what is left of the RM390,000 -- she now says only RM340,000 was received, RM40,000 more than she needed -- to others in need. She dribbles in unaccustomed medical terms to convince Malaysians she is ill. She fudges when inconvenient questions are asked, and would rather it be not raised at all. No one denies she is in pain for a life-debilitating medical condition.

What raised the public ire is her spin, in asking for public donations, not backed by medical prognosis. She claimed she was paralysed, had no money, needed RM300,000 for urgent surgery in Australia. None of which, it turns out, was true. The Prime Minister, his deputy, their wives and a sampling of the UMNO and cabinet heirarchy called on her, the order went to government-owned or -controlled companies to donate. In a week, RM390,000 was raised. We do not know what was donated into her bank accounts, to which public donations were directed. She left for Sydney in such haste that the Australian High Commission delivered the visa to her at the airport. And without a medical opionion about her condition or even if she needed to go to Australia.

She had an orthopaedic problem. Yet no orthopaedic surgeon in the Klang Valley, where she lives, saw her. She checked herself into the Pantai Medical Centre, where only a neurologist, a psychiatrist and a pain specialist saw her. She calls a press conference to tell the world of her paralysis. She arrives in Australia to find she is not paralaysed, did not need the life-threatening surgery she said she needed, nor was she paralysed, undergoes physiotherapy.

Indeed, all she needed was to check on a titanium implant imbedded in her which lifted out of its moorings after she was attacked outside her house. And she wanted it checked by the surgeon who imbedded it in her. She claimed she had little money, only RM26,000, salvaged from selling her Proton Saga and some savings she had. But she did not reveal she had a home in the upper-middle class Pantai Hill, nor a Harley Davidsom motorcycle, a Porsche and a Mercedes, had paid a downpayment of a third of what was collected in her name for a RM1,000,000 apartment in Suasana Central. In other words, she was not one who qualified for public donations to alleviate what turns out to be a minor medical problem.

When lesser mortals are forced to sell everything they have to save their loved ones from certain medical death, she, with these assets, milk Malaysians for funds so she could continue to live the life she leads. No one would grudge her if the funds collected was for the serious surgery she said she needed. She clings to doctor-patient confidentiality, accuses the PMC CEO of breaching it, and talking through his hat. However in pain and discomfort she is, she took the Malaysian public for a ride. It is this that is objected to, not that she is in pain. Especially, when others, less connected and with more serious ailments, die for want of funds for treatment. Utusan Malaysia was right to raise these concerns.

Some years ago, with government help, a fund was collected so such public appeals to pay for medical treatment would stop. But no one talks of it now, indeed no one knows what happened to that money, nor what it is used for. Those who apply for help is forced to demean themselves before they would qualify. Most would not. When medical treatment at the Hospital Universiti Malaya became too expensive for my strained purse, I was asked to appeal for help. I did, and walked out when it turned out I had first to swallow my self-respect. Multiply that a few tens of thousand times, and one barely scratches at the underbelly of health care in Malaysia.

With medical and health care rising exponentially, it can only get worse. When it is tinged in scam and the begging bowl, when one's soul must be mortgaged so one, or one's loved ones, could live, it raises doubts about what government is all about. When one decides, as Ras Adiba Radzi did, to throw self-respect to the winds, and take advantage, it questions this even more. Beggars cannot be choosers is not an option in medical and health care, though it is when the public donates for it.

What she did puts these people, now and in the future, at risk. What is worse, the money collected on her behalf went into her bank account, not to a neutral body. Those who contributed had their arms twisted; none would for other needy cases. She decided she wanted to be in Sydney, under the care of the orthopaedic surgeon who did the titanium implant, did not care if the procedure she underwent in Australia could be done cheaply here. When she asked for public donations, it is not her option where she would go, but if it could be done cheaper in Malaysia, she must. Those in her condition, even without her access to the funds and publicity, suffer as she does, is incontinent as she is, all that is written about her now is familiar to them. I know what uncontrollable pain is -- when my arthritis acts up -- and my sympathies are with her, and those like her, in her predicament.

But she shortchanged the Malaysian public. Did she think she could get away with it? Who advised her to do what she did? Why did she not consult the orthopaedic surgeon at PMC, if not the Klang Valley? She complained of paralysis. An orthopaedic surgeon is who consults for it. The medical fraternity at PMC is angry at what happened. The PMC is not free of blame, if only that this call for funds took place when she was a patient in it. What she did raised haunting moral questions about the role of privatised medicine in Malaysia, and the large number of Malaysians who slip through the health net because they cannot afford it. It is bad enough that people must beg for treatment. Often they are ignored. And devastated.

The poor are not without self-respect. The culture in this money-mad society assumes they have none. But when one must beg to save a loved one, it is in desperation and panic, often against one's better judgement. Many would rather suffer in silence than beg to stay alive. But they want their children to live and do to save them, in hope and desperation. Often only to see them die before treatment because public donations could not meet the cost. What Ras Adiba did was to kick these souls in the teeth. That is why she is attacked, not because she is in pain or that she suffers horribly.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my