New Delhi: After putting it in the cold storage for five years, the Union health ministry is deliberating a central law on protecting healthcare workers and has agreed to constitute a panel for the same, in the backdrop of a nationwide protests by doctors following the alleged rape-murder of a post-graduate doctor in Kolkata last week, ThePrint has learnt. The high-level committee, which will include representatives from various ministries as well as doctors’ association, will hold consultations with various stakeholders before proposing a law for providing legal safeguards in healthcare settings, top sources said. “The thinking is to incorporate views from all stakeholders for such a bill to come up,” Union health secretary Apurva Chandra told ThePrint.
Several professional networks of doctors — whose representatives have met with Union health minister J.P. Nadda over the past few days following the rape and murder of a post-graduate doctor in Kolkata last week — have demanded that the Union government must bring a separate law seeking to penalise those assaulting medical professionals.
A draft central legislation that came out in 2019, seeking to penalise those assaulting doctors and other healthcare professionals with imprisonment of up to 10 years and fine of Rs 2-10 lakh, had been stalled by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Following a meeting with Nadda Tuesday, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) — the largest network of doctors in the country — said it had.