New Delhi: As India faces a major health crisis due to COVID-19, a PIL filed in Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking nationalisation of health care sector and related services until the pandemic is contained.
Petitioner advocate Amit Dwivedi contented that right to health was part of right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution and the Supreme Court the right to receive necessary treatment has been held to be an inalienable part of right to life of a person.
The fight against the novel coronavirus would require a great deal of reliance on healthcare facilities and the public health sector is not sufficiently equipped to handle this requirement alone, Dwivedi submitted.
He demanded that the private sector must also be roped in and “all healthcare facilities, all 36 institutes, all companies and all entities related to healthcare sector” must be nationalised to defeat the pandemic.
He further said that due to lack of expenditure on India's public health care system, it is lying in tatters today.
"In the budget of 2020, India chose to allocate only 1.6% of its total estimated budget expenditure on public health…For years expenditure on public health facilities has been low and as a result of which India's public health infrastructure is substandard and inadequate, more peculiar in the time of pandemics like COVID-19, in comparison to the world and unfortunately we could not see much development in this front," he submitted.
Earlier, the apex court has suggested that all tests to identify coronavirus positive patients should be conducted free of cost.
While hearing a PIL, an SC bench headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan suggested that the test should be conducted free of cost in the identified private laboratories and said that the court will pass appropriate order on the matter.
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