Ludhiana, July 2
The IMA, Ludhiana, at its executive meeting held on Doctor’s Day decided not to celebrate this day as doctors were passing through a crucial phase of their careers because of the wrong policies of the state government.
The IMA, Punjab, at the state council meeting held on Sunday, passed a resolution for observing Doctor’s Day as the “protest day” at Amritsar. The IMA was also of the view that doctors were forced to commercialise their activities. No government agency, may it be state or the Centre, gave doctors any concession so that they could pursue charitable work. A lot of taxes in the form of custom duty or excise duty were imposed on the equipment and drugs which made medical treatment costlier.
The IMA demanded that all such taxes on drugs should be removed immediately, so that a poor man might not suffer because of shortage of funds. The government health structures had failed miserably. None of the medical colleges had tertiary care services. Not a single MRI, dialysis transplant surgery, neurosurgery were performed in any of the government set-ups. Here again, doctors were made the scapegoat by the government. It was ridiculous that those knowing nothing about medical science in bureaucracy were formulating the health policies. The Punjab Medical Council, which was supposed to formulate policies regarding doctors, was lying defunct for the past 30 years.
Clinics were being charged at the same rates as the commercial establishments. Electricity charges and MC octroi on medical goods was at par with other commercial goods. Above all, the government had brought doctors under the Consumer Protection Act thereby labelling them as traders and patients as customers. Under such circumstances doctors were not left with any choice but to commercialise their activities. Besides this, doctors were being booked under Sections 304 and even 302 despite orders from the high court that hospital deaths could not be dealt under these sections.
The IMA members said no doctor would like to bring bad reputation to his clinic. A doctor would never kill his patient intentionally. It is the primary duty of the doctor to treat the patient. Cure is in the hands of Almighty. That is the reason, doctors say: “I treat He cures”. The medical science was a science of opinion .There could be a genuine mistake even on the part of an experienced and seasoned doctor. Even a qualified expert could commit mistake resulting into complication but such an act or omission on the part of the expert would not prima facie come within the domain of knowledge.
