Gujarat government health set-up in ICU due to poor spending: PIL

The Gujarat High Court on Wednesday sought a reply from the state government, state health commissioner Jayanti Ravi, and the union government, after a public interest litigation (PIL) alleging lack of infrastructure and manpower in state's health set-up came up for hearing.

The petition filed by former joint director of health services Madhavji Gajera was taken up by the division bench of Acting Chief Justice AS Dave and Justice Biren Vaishnav, which directed the state and union government to file its reply on the matter by January 29.

Citing the union government's Rural Health Statistics Report-2017, Gajera argued that poor infrastructure, shortage of manpower, lack of funds, poor management, political and bureaucratic interference, and lack of leadership in medical community, even in large government healthcare facilities, have compelled patients to rush to private health facilities.

He added that quackery, medical negligence, irrational use of high-tech investigations, wrong treatment, and expensive diagnostic tests, are also issues faced by needy patients in private hospitals because of lack of government intervention.

The medical practitioner also pointed out that there have been large scale vacancies in the sub-centres, primary health centres, community health centres, sub-district and district hospitals, for long. He also said the shortage is not just of doctors, but also of paramedical staff as well as pharmacists.

The petitioner also alleged that one of the reasons behind the failure of the state and the union governments in meeting the bare minimum of Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) is due to inadequate spending by them on healthcare, accounting for about 0.75 per cent to 1.4 per cent of the total GDP in 2016-17. He also submitted that most of the spending was on staff salaries leaving little or nothing for infrastructure development, facilities, and drugs and other consumables.

The petitioner has demanded that the court should direct the state and centre to upgrade the healthcare facilities in Gujarat to comply with standards prescribed under IPHS.

PRAISES GALORE

While the High Court had punished petitioners for wasting the court’s time by filing frivolous PILs, the division bench praised the petitioner for coming up with this PIL. During the hearing, Justice Dave remarked that this is a genuine PIL and immediately issued notice to the state and the Centre.