SC forms 9-member task force on safety of healthcare professionals
Raising the issue of the lack of safety of healthcare professionals at the workplace, the Supreme Court of India (SC) on Tuesday formed a nine-member national task force (NTF) to provide guidelines on ensuring the same.
A bench of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra announced the formation of the committee while hearing a suo motu case on the rape-and-murder of a second-year postgraduate intern at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.
The nine members of the NTF are:
- Surgeon Vice Admiral Arti Sarin, Director General of Medical Services (Navy)
- Pratima Murthy, Director of National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru
- Anita Saxena, Vice-Chancellor of Pandit BD Sharma Medical University, Rohtak
- Pallavi Saple, Dean of Grant Medical College and Sir JJ Group of Hospitals, Mumbai
- Padma Srivastava, Chairperson of Neurology at Paras Health, Gurugram
- D Nageshwar Reddy, Chairman and Managing Director of Asian Institute of Gastroenterology and AIG Hospitals, Hyderabad
- M Srinivas, Director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi
- Goverdhan Dutt Puri, Executive Director of AIIMS, Jodhpur
- Saumitra Rawat, Chairperson of Institute of Surgical Gastroenterology, GI and HPB Onco-Surgery and Liver Transplantation, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, New Delhi and Member of Board of Management of the hospital
The ex-officio members will be the cabinet secretary, Union home secretary, Union health secretary, chairperson of the National Medical Commission and president of the National Board of Examinations.
The SC bench stated that the NTF would also propose timelines for implementing its recommendations based on existing hospital facilities, with three weeks given for submitting an interim report and two months for the final report.
The court also said that the phrase ‘medical professionals’ used in its order encompasses every medical professional, including doctors, medical students who are undergoing their compulsory rotating medical internship as a part of the MBBS course, resident doctors and senior resident doctors, and nurses, including nursing interns.
