‘Give more teeth to law on protection of medical personnel’

Jabalpur, Oct 01 (PTI): The Madhya Pradesh High Court directed the state government to revisit the provisions of ‘MP Chikitsa Evam Chikitsa Seva Se Sambandh Vyaktiyon Ki Suraksha Adhiniyam, 2008’ and make it more effective in order to protect doctors and paramedical staff in hospitals.
A division bench of Chief Justice M Rafiq and Justice VK Shukla, which issued the direction recently, said the state government may consider “incorporating some parts of the amendments, introduced in the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, in the 2008 Adhiniyam to provide more teeth to this enactment and make it really effective”. The HC directive came on a petition filed on a letter dated November 18, 2013 of Dr Sanjay Maheshwari, head of MP Birla Hospital & Priyamvada Birla Cancer Research Institute in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh.
In the letter, Maheshwari mentioned that on the midnight of November 11, 2013, a person involved in an accident was brought in with serious injuries, and he died three to five hours later despite the best efforts of the doctors.
As per the letter, the kin of the deceased started agitating and a mob vandalised the hospital as well as the residential campus, beating up doctors, paramedics and other staff.
The letter-cum-petition said the kin allegedly pressured the police into lodging an FIR under section 304 of the IPC against the petitioner and other hospital staff members.