The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently appointed a three-member committee, comprising two advocates and a doctor, to inspect in its jurisdiction any two government hospitals, including at taluk level, to ascertain the condition of medical equipment.
A Division Bench of Justices M. Sathyanarayanan and B. Pugalendhi appointed the committee, while hearing a batch of public interest litigation petitions filed in the wake of the recent Madurai Government Rajaji Hospital incident where power failure had allegedly left three patients dead.
However, the GRH, in a report to the Health Secretary, had refuted the allegation and said that the deaths had coincided with power failure at the trauma care block. The deaths were unrelated to power failure, it was said. The PIL petitions sought a direction to the State to probe the incident.
The petitioner, A. Veronica Mary from Madurai, said that a special investigation team comprising biomedical engineers, doctors, professors from reputed institutions and police officers should thoroughly probe the incident.
In an another PIL petition filed by S. Gurushankar, president and managing trustee of S.R. Trust that runs the Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre here, sought a direction to ensure quality in all government hospitals.
He had complained that a response to an application under the Right to Information Act had revealed various shortcomings in infrastructure in government hospitals. Also, there was a lack of trained personnel for trauma care and fewer dialysis machines at these hospitals, he said.
