Two pieces of news in recent times
have exposed the anarchy in the medical profession today. Following a
Right to Information (RTI) application to the All India Institute of
Medical Sciences (AIIMS), a citizen was told that drugs which were on
test primarily for adults suffering from hypertension in other parts of
the world, had been tested on children below 16 years in India, when
there was neither the permission nor the need for such test (as
children rarely suffer from hypertension).
Another report states that the Union Health Ministry has laid down
Standard Treatment Guidelines (STG) for 37 ailments on its website, to
act as a benchmark for doctors practising all over the country.
Both acts show a lack of concern for public health, both by the
authorities and the medical profession. If a premier
government-controlled institute like AIIMS could allow such unethical
and blatantly inhuman ethical practices on research subjects, the
condition of research protocols being undertaken in other institutes is
best left to the imagination.
Consumer activists and scientists have been crying themselves hoarse
that India is used either as a dumping ground for banned medicines in
other parts of the world or as a testing ground for medicines which are
yet to be introduced in the civilised world, but this does not have
percolated either into the minds of the regulating authorities or the
administrators of hospitals. The government has also failed to use
regulatory powers with the Medical Council of India to curb such
malpractices.
The health ministry’s STG is perhaps a typical case of adding salt to
the wounds of consumers who are already suffering from the malpractices
of the medical profession varying from unnecessary operations and
procedures to splitting fees between medical practitioners.
The decision to administer medicine or give some form of treatment to a
patient is a process which involves detailed history-taking, careful
examination of the patient and if necessary, resorting to tests and
investigations to arrive at a proper diagnosis to carry out treatment
on the patient.
The Ministry has cut short all these variables on the pretext of giving
“uniformity of treatment’’ to patients all over the country, and
offered treatment solutions on the net where it will be available to
all and sundry. While the objective may be noble, this will result in
more and more chemists and quacks who do not possess appropriate
qualifications, to take over the hazardous job of treating patients,
leading to grief all round.
The problem with the administration of health care in India arises
largely because of the lackadaisical approach of the government to
regulating the medical profession in the country. Quacks are allowed to
carry on their activities without let or hindrance, medical
practitioners qualified in one system of medicine blatantly prescribe
medicines of other systems of which they do not have an inkling and
talk of ‘upgrading the skills’ of medical practitioners from time to
time by the medical councils have been discussed for decades without
any practical solution to the issue at stake.
STG is available on thousands of sites on the Internet housing
textbooks of medicine, international organisations like the WHO and
leading medical universities. Instead of concentrating of its core job
of reining in medical malpractices, the Health Ministry appears to be
affording sanctity to all quacks by giving them access to such
information on demand.
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‘Fake docs don’t give consumers
any rights’
MS Kamath
Production of a fake document does not entitle a consumer to any
rights, even though consumer courts are consumer-friendly.
When such a complicated issue about the genuineness of the document
arises, the court will step aside and ask the complainant to go to a
civil court. This was the decision of the Himachal Pradesh (HP) State
Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission in The Chairman, Shivratri Mela
Committee and another vs. Bindra Devi.
During the Shivratri festival at Mandi in HP, the Committee floated a
lottery scheme in which devotees could buy a ticket worth Rs10, which
entitled them to participate in a lottery where the first prize was a
Maruti car. Bindra Devi allegedly bought one such ticket, the number of
which matched the number drawn for the first prize. However, when she
went to the Committee Office to claim her prize, the organisers turned
her away with the comment that the ticket she had submitted was fake.
Bindra went to the District Consumer Dispute Redressal Forum at Mandi
which ordered the committee to hand over the Maruti car to her and
imposed interest at the rate of 6% of the value of the car for the
delayed period and legal costs of Rs3,300.
The committee preferred an appeal against the said order in the State
Commission. The
committee contended that one of the dealers who was distributing
tickets at another centre had returned the prize-winning number ticket
as ‘unsold’, and the ticket produced by Bindra was fake. It was argued
that in such facts and circumstances, the consumer should be asked to
approach a regular civil court for a trial and the case was not fit for
adjudication in a consumer court where complicated issues are not
tackled. The committee also produced a report from the Forensic
Laboratory of Shimla, which had opined that the paper used for printing
the ticket submitted by the complainant was found different in
dimensions and quality in comparison to other tickets, which were
claimed to be genuine by the committee. The committee had also annexed
the unsold ticket as part of the evidence.
The commission noted that since doubts were raised about the
genuineness of the ticket submitted by the complainant and this was
backed by independent scientific evidence, this was not an open and
shut case, which deserved to be addressed by a consumer court. It held
that a person who purchases a lottery ticket was not a consumer as
defined under sections of the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. The
complainant was asked to approach a regular civil court if she so
desired, and the order of the lower form was set aside.
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1187053
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1187052
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