RS okays bill to shield docs, healthcare staff from attacks

NEW DELHI: In an effort to ensure safety of healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, Rajya Sabha on Saturday passed the Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Bill, 2020, that provides for up to five years in jail for attacks on doctors and healthcare workers fighting the outbreak.

Commission or abetment of acts of violence will be punishable with an imprisonment for a term of three months to five years, and with a fine of Rs 50,000 to Rs 2,00,000.

“Many healthcare workers including doctors, paramedics were insulted in some form or the other, due to the stigma attached to Covid-19. The central government acted on this situation and found that there was a need for a law, a prohibitory mechanism against such incidents,” health minister Harsh Vardhan said in the Upper House.

The bill will replace an ordinance brought in by the government in April to ensure zero tolerance for any violence against healthcare workers. The Cabinet promulgated The Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 to amend the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897, to provide protection to healthcare service personnel and property, including their living and working premises, against violence during epidemics.

The bill also intends to ensure that any situation akin to the current pandemic is also covered under the law. Personnel include public and clinical healthcare service providers such as doctors, nurses, paramedical workers and community health workers, any other persons empowered under the act to take measures to prevent outbreak of the disease or its spread and anyone declared as such by state governments.

The penal provisions can be invoked in instances of damage to property including a clinical establishment, any facility identified for quarantine and isolation of patients, mobile medical units and any other property in which the healthcare service personnel have a direct interest in relation to the epidemic. Offences will be investigated by an officer of the rank of inspector within a period of 30 days, and trial completed in one year, unless extended by the court for reasons recorded in writing, the bill proposes.