Deptt fails to submit status report in response to PIL on status of health services

HC GRANTS 4 MORE WEEKS FOR SUBMISSION OF REPORT
GANGTOK, 09 Oct: The State government, particularly the Health Department, has been unable to submit its report to the High Court within the given time period regarding the direction of the court to furnish various details concerning the status of the health sector services in the State.
The public interest litigation, filed by Rinzing Chewang Kazi, came up for hearing on 05 October during which the state counsel, Karma Thinlay, sought more time in order to file the complete report. Additional time of 4 weeks was granted by the High Court.
Earlier, on 24 August the division bench of the High Court had sought various details from the state respondents and passed a direction that all life saving drugs, which were not available at the health centres, be made available within 2 weeks. The Court had also directed the state respondents to furnish details of the facilities available at the district and sub divisional hospitals, the primary health centres including dispensaries with details of the number of such centres.
Furthermore the High Court had directed that the state furnish details on the availability of life saving drugs with their name / brand and quantity along with expiry dates and for which the respondents had been allowed a time period of 6 weeks.
Health Department officials, when approached, refused to comment on the issues raised and only confined themselves to the statement that the department was working on the report.
Several deficiencies in the delivery of health services in the state especially in the implementation of the health schemes such as National Rural Health Mission, the Janani Suraksha Yojana had been pointed out in the petition along with the allegation of non availability of essential drugs in most government hospitals and health centres in the districts.