“PATIENTS’ DAY” ON 28TH MAY TO CELEBRATE PATIENTS’ RIGHTS: PBT HOSTS OPEN FORUM IN KOLKATA

“Patients’ Day” (Rogi Divas) is celebrated every year on 28th May to commemorate patients’ rights and to bring awareness about medical negligence. 

This day (28th May) is also the death anniversary of Anuradha Saha who died due to gross medical negligence by three senior Kolkata doctors (Sukumar Mukherjee, late Abani Roychowdhury and late Baidyanah Halder) during a social visit to Kolkata in 1998.

We urge all patients, doctors and conscientious citizens to observe “Patients’ Day” to empower the vulnerable patients and to promote ethical practice of medicine. 

On this auspicious day, we also call upon the government to wake up and take stringent action against the rampant healthcare corruption across India. In particular, we call upon our Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi, to act on our repeated appeals to the health ministry for exemplary disciplinary action against disgraced ex-MCI president, Dr. Ketan Desai, and all his medical cronies who are still sitting at helm of MCI. 

Like the previous years, PBT will host an open forum to celebrate “Patients’ Day” at 5 PM on 28th May (Thursday) at the Calcutta Press Club near the Maidan in Kolkata. All are welcome.

Who is Dr. Ketan Desai and what is his history? He was the President of MCI until he was arrested.

The MCI was dissolved by the President of India on 15 May 2010 following the arrest of MCI's president Ketan Desai by the CBI on 22 April 2010. Desai, alleged middle-man J. P. Singh and doctors Sukhwinder Singh and Kanwaljit Singh have been booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act. 
The CBI recovered 1.5kgs of gold and 80kgs of silver from Desai's premises. Further, gold worth ₨ 35 lakhs were recovered from Desai's bank lockers in Ahmedabad. CBI told that he had more than 35 lockers which were then yet to be opened and contents noted. He also was reported to own more than 400 properties across the country. But surprisingly Mr. Gulam Nabi Azad the then Union Minister of Health commented that the Government had no control over MCI and cannot take any action.

 The chief vigilance officer (CVO) who complained about the "unethical" action of three ethics committee members of the Medical Council of India (MCI) has been sent back to his parent cadre while no action has been taken against the accused members, who have been defended by the president of MCI, Dr Jayshree Mehta as revealed by the file notings made public. 

CVO HK Jethi had stated that Dr Ajay Kumar, a member of the MCI ethics committee had committed an "unethical" act of telling the World Medical Association (WMA) that CBI charges against Dr Ketan Desai had been dropped, when two CBI cases are still pending against him. Jethi had recommended that the matter be referred to the health ministry to take action against ethics committee members, Dr Ajay Kumar, Dr Vinay Aggarwal and Dr Sudipto Roy who had accompanied Dr Desai to the WMA general assembly. 

Last year beginning, the CBI had received a complaint from Dr Kunal Saha, founder president of People for Better Treatment (PBT), an organization fighting against medical malpractice, which stated that the ethics committee members had misled the WMA to help Dr Desai become WMA president. The CBI forwarded the complaint to the vigilance section of MCI in June 2014. 

When the matter was put up before the MCI president, she sought a reply from Dr Ajay Kumar. Dr Kumar claimed that WMA was a private body of doctors with no linkage with the MCI and that Dr Desai was made WMA president by virtue of him fulfilling the conditions for membership including being a member of the Indian Medical Association (IMA). Dr Mehta concluded that Dr Kumar's reply was satisfactory and that the matter did not need to be pursued any further. 

However, Jethi differed with the MCI president and insisted that Dr Kumar had committed an unethical act in misleading the WMA regarding the status of the CBI cases against Dr Desai and hence action ought to be taken against him and the two other ethics committee members who accompanied Dr Desai to the WMA general assembly. The CVO had also recommended that the WMA be informed that there are two CBI cases pending against Dr Desai and that he was currently "out on bail in the CBI main trap case dated April 22, 2010". 

This led to a war of words between Dr Mehta and the CVO with the Jethi accusing Dr Mehta of trying to force him to send a letter to the CBI drafted by her instead of letting Jethi send the letter he had drafted which asked for information about all cases registered against Dr Desai. Dr Saha, while making public the entire file along with the notings, has accused Dr Mehta of deliberately trying to shield Dr. Kumar, a known associate of Dr Desai, and of threatening the CVO to stop investigating Dr. Desai's cronies who were helping him "to regain control of MCI and IMA". 

Though the CBI wrote back stating that these were two cases pending against Dr Desai and that charges had been framed in one, the MCI did not forward this information to the WMA as recommended by Jethi. In November last year, Jethi was repatriated to his parent cadre as he had requested the same when the health ministry did not respond to his request for protection and he had complained that he was "a victim of harassment" due to his drive against corruption in MCI