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Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007
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National

Court notice to two doctors

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi: The Supreme Court has issued notice to two Rajasthan doctors who were alleged to have wrongly diagnosed a person as HIV positive and discharged him in critical condition after telling his family members that AIDS was incurable and nothing could be done for him.

A three-judge Bench headed by Justice B.N. Agrawal issued the notice on Monday on a special leave petition filed by Susheel Kumar, who said he underwent humiliation, depression and trauma before subsequent tests showed that he was not HIV positive.

The petitioner, who belonged to a village near Sikar, first moved the District Consumer Forum complaining of deficiency in service and it directed the doctors, attached to a clinic, to pay him Rs. 2 lakh as compensation.

On appeal, both the State and national consumer disputes redress commissions rejected his claim and reversed the forum findings.

In his SLP against the national commission order, Kumar said his parents repeatedly pleaded with the two doctors to do proper diagnosis but they discharged him in a critical condition.He was then taken to the SMS Government Hospital in Jaipur, where doctors, on seeing his previous medical record, treated him like an untouchable.

He was put on the floor in the corridor and later given a cot with a signboard warning others that he was an AIDS patient and nobody should go close to him.

A few months later, Kumar was taken to a polyclinic in Jaipur which, however, declared him HIV negative.

The petitioner said the national commission seriously erred, not appreciating the fact that he was discharged in a critical condition and denied further treatment only because the first medical report diagnosed him as HIV positive.

He sought a direction to quash the commission’s order and an interim stay of its operation.

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