High Court serious over pvt hospitals attitude

Hyderabad: The High Court at Hyderabad took a serious note of private corporate hospitals not filing their counter affidavits in the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) petition seeking governmental regulation of private health sector among many other prayers.

A Division Bench comprising Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice J Umadevi on Monday warned the counsels appearing on behalf of Care Hospitals, Global Hospitals and Apollo Hospitals that if they do not file counter affidavits within the next two weeks, the court would conclude that they have no defence to offer and proceed accordingly.

The Bench was hearing a PIL filed by journalist K Narender highlighting the gross negligence of some of these hospitals and cited the case of Nikhil Reddy, who underwent a height-increasing surgery in Global Hospitals, which went bad and caused severe suffering to him. Similarly, the petitioner’s sister died due to negligent attitude of doctors in Care Hospitals.

The petitioner also brought to the notice of the court how several Vigilance inquiries brought out hundreds of crores of rupees scam in Arogyasri and CGHS schemes of the governments, but yet there was no action whatsoever against the guilty, corrupt private hospitals. Seeking greater governmental control over the rapidly increasing private corporate health sector, the petitioner also batted for strengthening of public health sector.

He cited how despite spending hundreds of crores of rupees on building a huge building for NIMS campus in Bibinagar, the government was refusing to bring it in use due to utter negligent attitude. The bench posted the case to two weeks for further hearing.