When it comes to daily efficiency and lack of heartache, the US wins over India in most respects, with a notable exception: health care. Having had to visit the doctor a couple of times last week, I realised how quick and stress-free the process can be in India.

It’s quite different in the US. After performing some sorcery to find out which of the nearby doctors is covered by your insurance, you call for an appointment — only to sometimes be given one several days hence. The actual doctor’s visit can be as long at three hours, as your appointment time apparently means nothing at all. And when you do meet the doctor, it’s invariably a stressed, form filling, overworked professional who barely listens to your complaints.

Then there’s the mysterious procedure to buy medicines. In India, you take your prescription to the chemist and simply buy everything you need — if there’s no crowd, you’re done in five minutes. In America, you stand in line at the chemist, who then receives your prescription and tells you to come back later — anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours. So you have to go back home or kill time somewhere, and then go back and stand in line again to collect your medicines.

I’m sure there are good reasons for this — prescription medicine abuse is common and very easy in India, but if you have a fever and just want to be diagnosed, get your pills and get back to bed, this efficiency is hard to beat.

Scary infections

On the subject of fevers, there’s a range of rather scary infections, with equally scary names, that regularly do the rounds in India, and if you catch one, a quick diagnosis is essential. I know of more than one person just like you and me who has died from one of these fevers. It’s a little scary that today, in our days of antibiotics and flush toilets, that disease can still take the life of otherwise healthy, well-nourished people, as if something out of a Charles Dickens novel. And if you do have a fever, don’t make the mistake I just did, which is to read Charles Dickens. I finally made my way through Oliver Twist —I enjoyed it, but it filled my half-awake fevered brain with terrible dank, dark images.

But back to health care, it’s probably good that with such efficient tropical diseases, the health care is efficient as well. Imagine calling a doctor to be told to come in next week, so your only option is the tender mercy of the hospital emergency room, a place notorious for its waits of many hours, and lack of proper medical attention. (One case that got a lot publicity when we were in the US was a patient who was getting so little attention in an emergency room, the helper was forced to call 911, only to be told that since they were already in a hospital there was nothing that could be done. The patient died while waiting for medical care.)

One aspect of health care in India that has sadly completely died out is the doctor who makes house calls. When my grandfather had a fever, the doctor did everything he could to diagnose remotely and not have to make the trip across the road to the flat. With cities so unfriendly to the movement of elderly people (and when you look at the incredible range of services that come right to your door in India) it’s quite sad that we’ve lost this luxury, one that even characters in Charles Dickens novels had access to.

Gautam Raja is a journalist based in Bengaluru, India.