Since medieval times, doctors and healers are known to be people of great respect and of fear, and while the fear and respect part is still intact with this profession it has got a new emotion attached to its name, i.e. Anger. While getting angry when you do not attain your desired wish is natural, but getting angry and restoring to violence on medical professionals while a life is unable to be saved despite their best efforts has seen high rise in recent years.
While we are going
through the current Pandemic, the efforts of medical professionals and public
at large has shown bit of a control on the spread of disease but just two years
back the situation was much more devastating. As the vast majority of public’s
movement was restricted to stop the spread of virus, the medical professionals
were the first in line to try and save the lives of infected people and the
world has been showing their gratitude towards the efforts of medical
professional. Medical professionals were tagged as heroes of the war, who faced
innumerable hardships including but not limited to violent attacks of public so
much so that the state governments-imposed jail term up-to 7 years for attack
on health care workers who are treating infected patients and while that does
sound assuring but it only happens post injury is inflicted and that too
depends on which state you are in as some states imposed a mere fine of Rs.
5,000/- and a jail term of up-to 1 year.
It may be easy to
think that need of the hour is to introduce a central law protecting healthcare
workers from violence but protection of healthcare workers is matter of state
legislation and states have power to introduce legislation as it deems fit for
protection of its healthcare workers and in absence of any special act if any
complaint is filed by a healthcare professional it is treated as complaint
filed by any ordinary citizen and no special preference is given to the
complaint whereas if the complaint is against any medical professional in
addition to Central Acts action is taken by medical authorities so far as to
cancellation of license to practice which a professional have worked hard to
obtain in the first place through various trials and tribunals.
A sad incident
recently took place in Rajasthan wherein a patient died while undergoing a
normal medical procedure, but the onlookers and relatives of the patient
protested against the Doctor so much so that a murder case was registered
against the Doctor and ultimately after gotten tired of threats against herself
and her family she chose to end her own life while trying to justify that the
patient died under normal circumstances and she did tried her best to save the
patient’s life. Medical professionals have been dragged, kicked, threatened
maimed and attacked by angry mob which has no face and while through video and
audio medium authorities do find on occasions people who are responsible but
not everyone involved is tried and even the fear of punishment and fine does
not stop such attacks from happening.
While the health care
community is asking a stringent act for their protection against physical
assaults there is no control over the verbal abuse which is faced by such
professionals every single working and non-working day, it has become a common
practice among educated and uneducated populous of the country to raise
questions on the competency of the health care community while all they have
been doing is being surrounded by death and despair around them, taking care of
a terminally ill patient or even a patient under mere fever is something which
requires a healer to soothe pain that the other person is feeling, and while it
cannot be quantified but is should not be seen with degrading eyes. The reason
why such people were given the name of healer in certain parts of the old world
was because they used to take away the pain and suffering of the person, while
the family of the sufferer used to keep a distance a healer went ahead to see
the ailment and try to soothe the pain. Even in this pandemic, many people left
their own family members to suffer in pain so that infection is not spread to
themselves and our healthcare professionals despite being total strangers took
care of everyone infected and while words of praise were given all around the
actual efforts even the government and the associations failed to recognize. No
incentive or rewards were granted to majority of healthcare workers many
promises which were made in the beginning of this war are long forgotten in the
middle of this war and while disheartened these healthcare workers have no
option but to move forward because it is the result of choices made by them,
work without any expectation of any reward/ recognition.
Many PIL have been filed in Supreme Court demanding the need of a central legislation for protection of healthcare professionals as while in other profession for a mistake there is a warning or a penalty or nothing in many occasions but in the profession of healthcare one mistake means stringent liability on you and most likely end of career of such professional. In absence of any dedicated central law many healthcare workers fail to move past filing of charge sheet against offenders and the community feels that a specialized act would deter violence against healthcare professionals and besides a new and improved legislation, appropriate and respectful communications between doctors and patients are also needed in a populous and lower-middle-income country such as India. Public-awareness programs and reassurance of the public at large are also important because people are mostly misguided by false information, while beliefs with no scientific basis may be accepted. Moreover, proper protection and security should be provided to medical centers and establishments.
A
healthcare professional is termed to be a equal to God, the legislation we need
does not require these professionals to be treated as God it just need to treat
them also as rest of the humans who are given benefit of doubt and are equally
protected not subjected to anger of a mob with no face and a proper authority
who will hear and respond to the concerns raised by these professionals.
