KOLKATA: Urging the medical practitioners to bring in “human touch” in providing healthcare, President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday reiterated that attack on doctors and ransacking hospitals by angry relatives of patients alleging medical negligence is unacceptable.
“A patient or the relatives of a patient also have their own responsibility to ensure a better healthcare system. Ransacking hospitals or beating up doctors alleging medical negligence (in case a patient dies) is not unacceptable,” the President said at the inauguration of the Indian Institute of Liver and Digestive Sciences (IILDS), the first full-fledged healthcare institute dedicated to liver diseases in eastern India, set up by the West Bengal Liver Foundation in Sonarpur in the southern suburbs of Kolkata.
Batting for humanitarian outlook on the part of doctors, Mr Mukherjee said that human touch should always complement the advancement of technology in modern healthcare.
“A smiling face can cure half the disease. This is a practical truth and if this adds to the competency of a medical practitioner then the patient will get the confidence of recovery,” he said.
The President lauded the efforts of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who was present at the event, to rein in private hospitals in Kolkata after complaints of exorbitant charges.
The Chief Minister said that when she saw that healthcare has deviated from the concept of service she spoke with the doctors and other officials concerned and came out with some preventive measures.
The Bengal government has passed a bill aimed at bringing transparency, ending harassment of patients and taking steps to stop medical negligence.
Mamata Banerjee during her address said that the other name to health services is service and giving life to a patients.
The state-of-the-art IILDS, spread over a four-acre plot, has a 100-bed inpatient section. It has a six-bed intensive therapy unit and two theatres equipped to carry out all types of gastrointestinal and hepatopancreatobiliary surgeries inclusive of liver transplantation.
