In a far-reaching verdict, a consumer court has held that a private doctor is as much bound as his government counterparts to render help to dying persons, irrespective of whether they are his patients or not.
Slapping a fine of Rs 3 lakh on Dr A K Manocha for not attending to an injured person lying outside his clinic, the Delhi Consumer Commission has said a 1989 Supreme Court judgment casts absolute liability even on a private doctor to save life. The doctor becomes a service provider to a dying person who is in need of urgent medical help while the person becomes a consumer.
Referring to a UN resolution that every patient has a right to treatment in case of emergency, the commission said it was callous and cruel of Dr Manocha, a pediatrician, to slam the door of his Janakpuri clinic on K L Gulyani, a soldier who was bleeding profusely from a knife injury after resisting a gang of pickpockets. Gulyani died before reaching another hospital.
Every doctor is bound by Hippocratic oath: Panel
Citing a Supreme Court verdict, the consumer ciourt rejected Dr Manocha’s plea that he was under no obligation to help the injured person as he was a private practitioner and there was no relationship of consumer and service provider between the two. The commission said, “It is not only a doctor of the government hospital who is bound to render help to a dying man. Every doctor is bound by the Hippocratic oath and must render help to seriously injured persons.”
This is in keeping with the Supreme Court verdict in Pandit Parmanand Katara vs Union of India, which laid down that whenever a person needed emergency treatment, it was the duty of a medical professional to render all possible help and see to it that the person reached the proper expert as early as possible.
The commission headed by Justice Barkat Ali Zaidi, however, ruled that the hospital to which Gulyani had been subsequently taken was not liable to pay any damages. This is because Gulyani was found dead by the time he reached Orchid Hospital.
The couple that took Gulyani to hospital had testified to Dr Manocha’s failure to attend to Gulyani when he was still alive. The commission held that the evidence given by Naveen Kumar and his wife Vandana could not be disbelieved because they were deposing against a doctor to whom they had gone for the treatment of their daughter.
source: Times Of India