Supreme Court to listen to plea on violence against healthcare workers

The Supreme Court are hearing on Monday a plea seeking direction to authorities to confirm adequate security at hospitals and medical centres to forestall attack on healthcare workers by patients’ relatives et al.

A bench of Justices S K Kaul and Abhay S Oka is probably going to require up the matter tomorrow, PTI reported. The petition read that there are a rise within the number of attacks on healthcare workers, which include, assaults, verbal abuse and extreme incidents of “public lynching” that had caused deaths among healthcare workers.

The plea filed by the Delhi Medical Association and Dr Satyajit Borah, president of the Assam State Branch of IMA, also seeks directions to Centre and states to line up a distress fund so on grant compensation to the victims or families of the deceased healthcare workers.

“The petitioners are seeking appropriate directions within the variety of guidelines to own a security system in situ to make sure a secure working environment for the medical service personnel/ professionals and therefore the health care workers’,” it had said.

“At present, there's no substantial central legislation which features a holistic mechanism of preventive, punitive and compensatory measures which may address the above-mentioned problems with violence against medical service personnel/professionals and therefore the health care workers,” the plea had claimed.

In April this year, following the death of a doctor in Rajasthan allegedly by relatives of patients, a public interest litigation(PIL) was filed within the apex court by Indian Medical Association (Dwarka) seeking comprehensive guidelines for the protection of doctors, and evolving a mechanism to compensate the family and dependents of the deceased doctors.