Plea filed in Supreme Court to nationalise private healthcare to cater to COVID-19 patients

With coronavirus fast-spreading its tentacles in the country, a PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court for a direction to the Centre and states to nationalise all healthcare facilities, including private hospitals, to contain the disease.

The right to get medical treatment is a part of the right to life as defined and provided for in the Article 21 of the Constitution, he pointed out.

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

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The plea by advocate Amit Dwivedi 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 of countries, where healthcare has been 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 crore 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 minuscule even in comparison to the expenditure of low-income countries, he said.

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Since "a 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 all these private health care institutes and make them available at the service of the common man, free of cost, and provide quality treatment and care," his plea stated.

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