With growing incidents of attacks on doctors, the State Health and Family Welfare Department has sought protection for doctors and other staff working in various health facilities throughout the State.
In recent months, it has been observed that doctors are being manhandled by the family members of the patients on the pretext of wrong treatment. This has led to a feeling of insecurity amongst doctors and other staff working in the health institutions throughout the State.
After the Odisha Medical Services Association (OMSA) sought to promulgate strictly the Orissa Medicare Service Persons and Medicare Service Institutions (Prevention of Violence and Damage to Property) Act, 2008 to curb violence against healthcare providers in the Government institutions and threatened to give mass resignation, the Government buckled to their demands and asked to open police outposts in all tertiary care institutions, district headquarters hospital and sub-divisions hospitals in the State and instructed to lodge FIRs in all such cases.
But the question is it is all about the safety of the doctors but what about the poor patients who come to the hospitals for treatment and die either due to negligence of the doctors or for non attendance of the medical staff? The law works in many complex ways.
Section 88 of the Indian Penal Code lays down that an act not intended to cause death, done by consent in good faith for a person’s benefit, does not constitute an offence.
In simple words, police action should not be initiated against a doctor for medical negligence. Instead, the investigating officer is required to forward the case diary along with a post-mortem report, if any, to a team of doctors of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for probe.
According to sources, there have been close to a dozen cases of alleged medical negligence reported but very few doctors have been booked for medical negligence and the cases were forwarded to the IMC team.
The Medical Council Act, 1956, had no provisions to take action against doctors found guilty of medical negligence. In the regulations brought out in 2002, the statutory body said action could be taken against such doctors but did not stipulate any section or provision under which they could be penalized.
When such a case goes to the consumer court, the absence of a non-medical person to understand medical concepts hurts a lot.
For families seeking help in cases of alleged medical negligence, the law of the land has little help as there is no stringent mechanism in place to deal with such cases against the erring doctors.
Think about the KBK districts where a majority of people are tribals and illiterate. The districts are still under the shadow of poor health facilities despite huge spending of funds through different welfare schemes and programmes for health.
The lack of doctors and poor medical facility aggravate their health conditions. Doctors are reluctant to serve in KBK districts despite the incentives offered to them by the Government. Even doctors who are natives of KBK region are not keen to serve in the area and want postings in Cuttack and Bhubaneswar.
In an attempt to stop doctors from leaving Government hospitals and community health centers in poverty zones of KBK which are in grip of Maoist-affected areas, the Odisha Government has decided to double their salary.
Massive doctor posts are lying vacant in eight districts of KBK. Besides, doctors are remaining on leave for indefinite periods on some pretext or the other after being posted to these areas.
It is also evident that some doctors are indulged in private practice during their duty hours despite being forbidden by the Government.
The Government is helpless to take any stern action against them because of scarcity of doctors in the State and mass resignation threat given by the OMSA.
Until more medical colleges are not set up in the State, the required number of doctors will not come out to meet the demand and the monopolistic attitude of them cannot be curbed.
So it is high time the Government should take prompt action to establish a number of medical colleges in the State, particularly in the KBK districts, to mitigate the hardship of its denizens, opined intellectuals here.