The Supreme Court Friday directed the Centre and the states
to file their responses on a plea seeking directions for a uniform standard of
healthcare for citizens in line with the Constitution by adopting
provisions of the Clinical Establishments Act, 2010.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Vikram Nath granted
four weeks to the Union of India and the state governments to file their
replies.
The top court was hearing a plea filed by Jan Swasthya
Abhiyan, Patients' Rights Campaign and K M Gopakumar which had also sought
directions for operationalising all the provisions of the Act, as well as
Clinical Establishment Rules, 2012 in order to ensure affordable and quality
healthcare.
The plea had sought directions for notification and
implementation of the conditions for registration of clinical establishments
such as observance of minimum standards, display of rates for procedures and
services, compliance with the standard treatment protocol, as provided in
Sections 11 and 12 of the CEA read with Rule 9 of the Rules, 2012.
The petition had also sought directions that a
grievance redressal mechanism be created for the patients at the district,
state and national level national level till the lacunae in the CEA are filled
by a suitable legislation.
The PIL said the duty to provide healthcare to
citizens was put on the government under Article 47 of the Constitution;
however, the public healthcare system did not proceed as conceived and treats
only 30 per cent of the patients, while the rest are treated by the private
sector.
The petition contended that the public healthcare
system suffers from a lack of public health infrastructure and human resources,
non-availability of medicines, lack of public investment and forced dependency
on the private sector.
The plea had submitted that there is an urgent need to
develop the public healthcare system in India by providing proper
infrastructure and sufficient budget to ensure that the maximum facilities
exist in the public domain, not only in normal times but also at the time of
emergencies such as COVID-19.