A candlelight protest march was taken out under the aegis of non-government organisation People for Better Treatment (PBT) at Jantar Mantar here on Wednesday demanding a new mechanism to deal effectively with cases of medical negligence.
Kunal Saha, who recently got a compensation of Rs.13 crore for the wrong medical treatment of his wife Anuradha which led to her death, has formed the organisation that fights for the rights of the victims of medical negligence.
Through the protest march, PBT demanded setting up of a transparent and a corruption-free regulatory body to head all the medical centres in the country, alleging that the Medical Council of India (MCI) had failed to deliver its part of duty in securing the interests of patients.
“A regulatory organisation is needed to fix accountability of these negligent doctors. My father Justice Verma also became a victim of such negligence by the so-called well known doctors who prescribed a cocktail of drugs to him without scrutinising his test report”, alleged Shubhra Verma, adding that “MCI appears to be under a lot of pressure and fails to honestly review the cases of negligence.” She said mere a few days of suspension was not enough in cases of medical negligence, something more needed to be done. Among those who participated in the protest was Poroma Rebollo who lost her father. She also complained about the callousness of the authorities and about the unanswered RTI applications. “This organisation has been set up as the voice of those who have either become helpless medical patients or have already suffered deaths due to the wrong treatment by the doctors or the so called Gods and have not been awarded any justice”, said Meenakshi Jain whose father Mr. P.K. Jain “died of medical negligence ”.
