India needs national law for safety, protection of doctors: Fauzia Khan

New Delhi, Dec 4 (PTI) Rajya Sabha member Fauzia Khan on Thursday made a strong case for bringing a national law for the safety and protection of doctors.

Khan, who belongs to the NCP-SCP party, said that doctors and healthcare workers are supposed to be saviours of life, and people invest extreme faith in them, almost next to their faith in God.

"And yet today, these very doctors and healthcare workers are being threatened, assaulted, abused, attacked, and mobbed also," she said in her Zero Hour submission in the upper house.

The scale of the problem is impossible to ignore, she said, and cited a survey by the Indian Medical Association, which said 75 per cent of doctors have faced violence in their lives.

"This problem is not limited to any state. It is everywhere, all over the nation. Repeated assaults lead to doctors being unwilling to take up emergency or trauma duties. And obviously, when doctors do not feel safe, patients ultimately pay the price," the MP said.

Khan further said the government has failed to step in with the urgency the situation demands.

According to her, the root causes of the problem include overcrowded government hospitals, lack of basic security, non-functional CCTVs, and no trained security staff.

"...families arrive in emergency rooms, frightened, desperate, and overwhelmed. The communication in these moments can turn dangerous," she said.

The truth is that most delays arise from deep structural shortages in the public health system, as existing state laws are fragmented, inconsistent, and weakly enforced, she said.

She further said the current system cannot differentiate between medical complications, adverse outcomes, and criminal negligence.

FIRs are often filed against doctors without expert review, and the police, without medical training, investigate complex clinical outcomes, Khan said.

She highlighted that, as health is a concurrent subject, Parliament has full authority to enact a national bill.

"What we need is an effective national doctor and healthcare workers' safety and protection act," she said.

The MP also said the country needs health and medical justice tribunals, which have medical legal experts, subject experts, physicians, surgeons, and forensic experts, among others.

She also emphasised the need to increase the budget of the health department. PTI NKD HVA