SC terms plea to nationalise hospitals to fight coronavirus as misconceived

The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed as "misconceived" a plea for "nationalising" all health care facilities, including private hospitals of the country, in order to contain Covid-19 pandemic effectively.

A bench of Justices Ashok Bhushan and S Ravindra Bhat rejected the plea by advocate Amit Dwivedi saying, "No such direction can be issued."

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The court, however, agreed to tag his plea related to conducting tests and treatment of patients suffering from Covid-19, along with a pending PIL.

Dwivedi, in his plea, contended that the right to get medical treatment was a part of the right to life as defined and provided for in Article 21 of the Constitution.

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'If allowed, it would benefit the citizens of India and will relieve them from insurmountable hardships," the petitioner added.

The plea stated India does not have sufficient public healthcare infrastructure to combat a pandemic like Covid-19 and as a last resort, it needs to take help of the private healthcare sector.

Globally this is being done. Besides Spain, there are many other examples also, where healthcare has nationalised till the containment of the disease, he added.

In India, for decades the public health sector has remained in shambles due to low budgetary allowances. India chose to spend only 1.6%, i.e. Rs 67,489 Crores, of its total estimated budget expenditure on public health which is not only very low in comparison to the average global public health expenditure but is also miniscule even in comparison to the expenditure of low-income countries, he said.

"Since the majority of Indians are not able to approach the private healthcare providers and the charges by them are prohibitive in nature. In this dire situation, it becomes the primary duty of the State to take control, temporarily nationalise, of all these private health care institutes and make them available at the service of common man, free of cost, and provide the quality treatment and care," his plea stated.

The petitioner also pointed out that the private healthcare, ranked as one of the best in the world is lying vacant and unutilised due to ban on commercial flights, though it catered to about five lakh foreigners in 2018.