Emphasising the urgent need for the State governments adopting the Clinical Establishment Regulation Bill, 2010, to stem the tide of unauthorised clinics flooding the medical sector, Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday said it would help in increasing accountability on the part of every registered health facility as well as doctors. Though some States, including West Bengal, already adopted similar laws, they were not “as comprehensive as the national legislation,” he said.
Within a year of implementation of the law, every health facility would have to register its existing infrastructure and the doctors practising there. “A national council will subsequently categorise the facilities, while individual district councils under the District Magistrate will implement it with the appeal lying with the State councils.”
Mr. Azad was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the 4{+t}{+h} World Congress on Mild Approaches in Assisted Reproduction organised by the G.D. Institute for Fertility Research here. Reacting to media reports that Union Minister of State for Health S. Gandhiselvan had flouted Supreme Court recommendations, Mr. Azad said the ministry wanted to give the institutions a chance to upgrade their infrastructure and there was no irregularity in the move.
