Countless patients have lost their lives due to medical negligence in India. Many have been disabled. Numerous families have lost the precious lives of their loved ones in Indian hospitals. Medical negligence occurs in all countries. But in India the extent of negligence by hospitals and medical practitioners is enormous. Enforcement of accountability by the Indian Medical Association and Medical Council of India has been feeble. Accountability by the judiciary is time-consuming, but it is the only effective way of making the healthcare providers answerable to the affected relatives and society.
October 25 is a RED letter day in the healthcare history of India when the Supreme Court ordered Kolkata's AMRI hospital and three doctors to pay a cumulative compensation of 11.41 crores INR (including interest) to Dr.Kunal Shah, a US-based doctor of Indian origin, whose 29 year old wife Anuradha Shah, a child psychologist, died due to medical negligence in 1998. They came to Kolkata to spend their holiday in their home. But unexpectedly she was admitted to AMRI hospital for treatment of skin rashes. And she breathed her last in the hospital. The relentless struggle of her husband came to a happy ending yesterday, though his loss is irreparable, when the Supreme Court pronounced this historic judgement. It is the highest ever compensation awarded in a case of medical negligence in India. It is also a victory for millions of people who expect medical care with real concern to the patients. The Supreme Court observed that the judgement would be a deterrent to doctors, hospitals, and nursing homes to discharge their responsibility seriously.
Some years ago, V. CHANDRASEKHAR, India's national Table Tennis champion, was admitted to the much-touted Apollo Hospital for a minor procedure. But the procedure ended the brilliant sport career of Chandra when he came out of the surgery as a paralysed person. The hospital fought to justify its "innocence", but the Supreme Court in 1995 ordered the hospital to pay a compensation of 19 lakhs INR.
Recently India's most prestigious All Institute of Medical Sciences has been in the news for wrong reasons. Doctors make diagnosis and treat patients based on blood test reports prepared in the laboratory. But who does this crucial work? Untrained lab attendants. Qualified lab technicians are found sleeping entrusting the work to lab attendants. Unsuspecting patients and their families are cheated. If this is the state of affairs in AIIMS, what happens in other hospitals can be imagined with utter helplessness.
Not only in India but all over the country, there is a huge increase in the number of cases of Medical Negligence. As discussed in the above post Anuradha Shah's family can claim for Medical Negligence Compensation, because of which she lost his life. Its very important to hire the qualified and skilled people to decrease the number of such cases.
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Medical Negligence