NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre on a plea filed by a body of allopathy doctors questioning the Centre's permission to practitioners of Indian System of Medicine, and Homeopathy to practice modern medicine and perform surgeries.
A bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and Sudhanshu Dhulia sought a response from the Union government after hearing advocate Sunil Fernandes on behalf of the Association of Medical Consultants, Mumbai.
The court tagged the plea with a similar petition filed by the Indian Medical Association and fixed the matter for hearing on November 4.
The petitioner association, representing 11,000 doctors through its medico-legal chairman Dr Sudhir Gurunath Naik challenged validity of the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Amendment Regulations, 2020, thereby, allowing PG scholars of Shalya and Shalakya to perform 58 surgical
procedures after completion of Post Graduate Degree in Ayurveda stream of medicine.
The plea claimed the amendment was violative of Articles 14, 19 and 21 of the Constitution so far as it enabled the practitioners of Indian System of Medicine andHomeopathy to practice allopathy and perform Surgeries, thereby causing grave prejudice to the public health, medical infrastructure and Right to Life including the Right to Correct and Prompt Medical Aid as enshrined under Article 21 of Constitution.
It further contended that the impugned legislations fosters an age-old issue of quackery in India, without laying down any adequate mechanism to deal with the problem of non-qualified and untrained doctors prescribing modern medicine.
The plea also cited a 2016 World Health Organization's Report titled The Health of Workforce in India" which revealed that 57% of the total doctors practising allopathy did not have a requisite medical qualification, which exposes the rampant quackery and the validation given by the impugned legislations will only further worsen Indias healthcare system.
It maintained that there is an urgent need to abolish Cross System Practice / Mixopathy, and bring fundamental changes in health legislations to make Right to Health and Fair Medical Treatment, a reality.
The association relied upon a Supreme Court judgement in Poonam Verma vs Ashwin Patel, (1996) to point out courts have time and again laid down that prescribing allopathic medicines without adequate qualification and experience is an Unfair Trade Practice while the failure to provide explanation of the side-effects of a prescribed allopathic medicine amounts to medical negligence, attracting criminal liability.
"This court has cautioned that, employing traditional medical practitioners who do not possess the required qualification, skill and experience to provide allopathic treatment in hospitals and to treat a patient in emergencies is gross negligence," it said.
The legislations would now enable the practitioners of alternate medicine to use prefixes and suffixes such as Dr and Surgeon. This will create confusion in the minds of the public in general and especially in rural areas, it added.
The association also quoted study and reports from the UK, the US and Australia and France, which purportedly rejected any evidence on the efficacy of Homeopathy treatment.
"Even in Germany, which is the birthplace of Homeopathy, there is a sense of disbelief in Homeopathic treatments. The National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (KBV), which represents 1,50,000 doctors and psychotherapists in Germany, said that health insurance companies should not fund homeopathic services as there is insufficient scientific evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic procedure," it stated.
