PIL in Madras High Court seeking more funds for HIV+ woman

MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the HC sought a report from the State Health Secretary on a PIL seeking a direction for better treatment and compensation for the pregnant woman who contracted HIV owing to negligence during a blood transfusion.

The litigant, M Abbas Mandhiri, advocate and organiser of MNM Madurai South, pointed out in his petition that despite the State Blood Transfusion Council announcing that asking relatives of patients to donate blood for elective procedure or deliveries is a punishable offence, a majority of GHs ask relatives to donate blood as a replacement. The blood of the HIV-infected teenager being transfused to the pregnant woman was a result of a violation of this policy, he submitted.

Moreover, there are several vacancies in the TANSACS that ought to be filled to enable the department to take effective control measures against the infection and monitor blood donation activities, he noted. The victim must be given the best medical care to ensure that the disease is not transmitted to the child, Abbas submitted, and prayed the Court for a direction for the same.

He also sought directions to formulate a policy for safe blood donation. The bench, comprising justices K K Sasidharan and P D Audikesavalu, issued a notice to the Health Secretary, Director of TANSACS, GRH dean among others. They also directed the Secretary to file a report on the steps taken on the issue in next hearing on January 22.

PIL to videograph all postmortems

Madurai: The HC Bench sought response of the health secretary on a PIL, praying direction to videograph all postmortems to avoid irregularities. Litigant R M Arun Swaminathan, an advocate, stated that postmortems were conducted without following rules prescribed in the Tamil Nadu Medical Code. Medical officers simply sign reports without participating in the procedure, and in many cases, autopsy report of one person was used for more by merely changing name and case details, he claimed. A bench, issued notice to the health secretary, DME and director of Medical and Rural Health Services returnable before January 22.

‘Consider having uniform syllabus’

Madurai: “It is high time the government had an introspection on the need to make syllabus uniform across various boards throughout the country,” observed the HC while giving a series of suggestions to the government, teachers and parents in helping students avoid mental stress. A bench, comprising justices S Vimala and T Krishnavalli, in its order, said that the government must consider introducing uniform syllabus so that one group of students does not have a march over the other group because of their syllabus instead of their intelligence.