The proposal to write medical prescriptions in Kannada has elicited a mixed response from government doctors in the city. Some feel it is more suited for rural areas and not cosmopolitan centres like Bengaluru. Others feel it should be an option rather than a binding rule.
Early this month, Kannada Development Authority urged Karnataka Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao to issue an order mandating doctors working in government health centres and hospitals to write prescriptions in the state’s official language. Its chairperson also suggested felicitating doctors for ‘their activities in favour of the language’. However, the health minister said making the proposal mandatory “doesn’t seem practical”.
Dr Madhusudhan from Minto Ophthalmic Hospital said patients from different states come to government hospitals, so a blanket rule on Kannada prescriptions is not practical.
Dr Satyamurthy Hebbar, chief medical officer with the Ayush department, welcomed the suggestion and said it may encourage patients hailing from different states to pick up basic Kannada. However, he calls for flexibility. If a doctor and a patient they are seeing are conversant in Kannada, then they should write in Kannada.
A doctor at a Namma Clinic centre in Mahalakshmi Layout was worried about facts getting lost in translation. Any errors arising due to translation can affect a patient, he said.
A pharmacist expressed concerns about the “confusion” that can arise from the names of drugs written in English on the medicine strip versus in Kannada on the prescription.
An orthopedic doctor working at Victoria Hospital said medicines are manufactured around the world and incorporating Kannada labelling may not be feasible.
Viral prescription
Netizens have heaped praise on Dr C G Mallikarjun for writing a medical prescription in Kannada. He is a dentist in Chikkanayakanahalli in Tumakuru district. Since the photo of his prescription was posted on X on September 10, it has been shared 574 times and liked by 1,600 users.
“I have written prescriptions in Kannada a few times earlier for local residents. I think such a proposal will work in rural areas where the use of Kannada is commonplace,” he says.