JAIPUR
Medical services in Rajasthan remained affected on Friday with the private doctors continuing their agitation against the Right to Health Bill passed by the State Assembly earlier this week and the resident doctors boycotting the work in government hospitals. The deadlock over the Bill continued even as the private hospitals and nursing homes remained closed.
The Bill gives every resident of the State the right to emergency treatment care without prepayment of requisite fee or charges by any public health institution, health care establishment and designated health care centres. Private hospitals are apprehensive of the government’s interference in their functioning following the enforcement of the law.
While the private doctors have demanded a rollback of the Bill, the resident doctors in the government hospitals have extended support to them and are boycotting the work. The impact was visible in the health facilities such as Sawai Man Singh Hospital in Jaipur – the biggest government hospital in the State – where only senior doctors were attending to the patients.
Major operations in the government hospitals were postponed and the patients were being treated only for emergency care. The All Rajasthan In-Service Doctors’ Association has also asked its members to stop private practice at home in support of the agitation.
Private Hospitals & Nursing Homes Society’s secretary Vijay Kapoor said the doctors would not budge until the Bill was withdrawn. Medical & Health Minister Parsadi Lal Meena has already rejected the demand, saying the Bill had incorporated the doctors’ suggestions submitted to the Select Committee, which had thoroughly examined the legislation and considered all the aspects.
Rajasthan has become the first and the only State in the country to legislate the right to health with the passage of the Bill. The ruling Congress had made a promise to bring the law in its manifesto for the 2018 Assembly election.