(Photo credit: Wikipedia

It’s all so long ago that I can’t quite remember whether it was on the last day before school closed for the Summer or if it was on the first day that we returned from the holidays that we were marched off to the school infirmary, class by class to get a TABC shot and a small pox vaccination. All through the day, there was a line of school children standing class wise in height order bravely waiting for their shots.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since  I was always the shortest in my class I was the first in line but  I escaped the shot as I produced an Exemption Certificate having got the shot at home. Injections were my worst nightmare and when I had them at home I used to give everyone a hard time. First they had to chase me all over the house and then hold me down while the shot was administered. And after the shot, I would collapse in a heap, fainting with fright. Of course the hysterics diminished over the years especially when we had TABC parties at home when my father would vaccinate his friends’ children and I had to lead by example. We were around 6-8 of us who would be vaccinated by my father and after the shots were done, the parents would leave us to our devices while they went off to the Club or the Mess for a glass of beer and a night of partying. So  while I missed the TABC shot I could not escape the Small Pox vaccination which was administered with a scalpel along the forearm by a Municipal doctor who visited each school. One year I remember there was a Russian vaccine which had to “screwed” into the body with a split needle!

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And in what seems almost a cavalier fashion, our  re-usable needles at home were auto claved in our regular teapot while the ones used in school were jabbed and re-jabbed into a minimum of 25 children before they were changed!

With infirmaries truly a room of the past, Small Pox an unknown disease, typhoid vaccines and reusable needles even more of a taboo, today’s patients insist on disposable needles, individually packed alcohol swabs, doctors with masks, gloves and gowns and also the batch number of the vials used to record for posterity! This attention to detail is restricted not only to regular Medical practice but also to drug trials and research. I was amazed by yesterday’s news article in the Economic Times which said that the new guidelines for Clinical Trials would require a video recorded consent of each patient participating in the research. Not only will this violate the patient’s privacy ( the paper said) but would also entail each doctor or paramedic to be a videographer as well. Honestly, a time will come when the video recording of the consent will in itself have to be video recorded to ensure that there was no “doctoring” of the informed consent.