Even as the DMA office-bearers lauded him for initiating such measures as the launching of the pulse polio programme, a cancer and cataract eradication drive and the distribution of hearing aids to the needy, a section of the newspersons present on the occasion pointed out that the programmes existed more on paper than in reality. Neither did they care much for the Delhi government honouring 12 medical practitioners with state awards, countering it by saying that the DMA seemed to be more concerned about 12 doctors than the thousands of patients being denied proper health care in the city.

There was also a perceptible resentment among the medical fraternity who questioned the idea of praising a minister who, despite belonging to the medical community himself, failed to have the anti-quackery bill -- one of the issues close to the DMA's heart -- passed in the Assembly.

One of the reporters raised the issue of the girl who recently expired at the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital after a doctor allegedly pulled out the life-saving tube from her mouth due to a reported altercation with her parents.

Others promptly pointed out the government's failure in taking up such critical matters as the acute paucity of staff in the dozen-odd state-run maternity centres and primary health centres, the over-crowding of hospital wards that forced three or even four patients sharing a single beds, the absence of the most elementary drugs at government most hospitals and dispensaries. There wasn't even a system of fumigating and disinfecting hospitals periodically, somebody pointed out, not to speak of hospitals that haven't been whitewashed for years.

The organisers had to of course rise to the challenge and defend Dr Harshvardhan. While admitting that the government could have done a lot more to improve the quality of the health care presently available, they said that the minister couldn't be blamed for many of the issues taken up. For instance, the primary health centers, the mother and child care centres, and many hospitals in the Capital were under the MCD's jurisdiction. Unless the entire health was put under a single authority, they said, no minister would be able to achieve much, adding that it was precisely for the reason that six MCD hospitals were taken over by the government.

It was being hoped, they said, that the formation of a Delhi Public Service Commission would solve the problem of the absence of doctors in MCD health centres. As of now, if 600 doctors were recruited by the UPSC, only 200 finally joined up. A major achievement of the minister was that the draft for forming a Delhi Public Service Commission had been readied, they said.

They blamed the lack of resources as the ministry's failures, but had no answers when reminded of the debts owed by private hospitals to the government and the latter's failure to make use of those collected.

Speaking on the occasion, the DMA president Rajesh Chawla admitted that there were big government failures like the shortage of drugs in the TB control programme, the unhygienic conditions in hospitals, the improper implementation of the anti-smoking law. But, he said, whatever prominence the present government had been given to health was because its health minister was a qualified doctor. Other participants to the meet included DMA secretary Vinod Khetarpal, its former secretary Naresh Goyal, Praveen Khilnani and Rajeev Uttam.