Consumer concerns

Consumer courts set up under Punjab Consumer Act of 2005, have dramatically altered life for people across Punjab.

The consumer courts set up under the Punjab Consumer Act of 2005, have quite dramatically altered life for people across the province. The courts appear also to be expanding their scope, taking up a wider variety of cases, with air-conditioner retailers being penalised for selling defective machines and mobile phone companies being warned against misleading advertising. Citizens everywhere are taking advantage of this as the existence of the courts becomes better known. The latest case before the courts involves charges of negligence against two doctors of the General Hospital in Lahore.

A petitioner from Kasur has stated that his wife was operated on at the hospital by a person who was not a doctor. He has sued two doctors for Rs237,000, for botching the surgery and cited both the mental anguish he suffered, as well as the financial strain involved. The chief executive of the hospital, one of the doctors who has been sued, has denied the charges and stated that two fully qualified surgeons had treated the patient. The findings in the case will be closely watched by many concerned over the state of health care offered in our public sector facilities. If the charges of the surgery being carried out by someone not qualified to do so, turn out to be accurate, we gain a shocking insight into the level of professionalism in the health sector — although, of course, it cannot yet be said whose account is correct. Doctors everywhere complain of patients taking up cudgels each time things go wrong, as is sometimes inevitable in medicine.

But the fact is also that instances of negligence in our hospitals have been growing. Mercifully, in this case, no life was lost. Others dependent on public sector care, or indeed even those who can afford expensive private facilities, have not been quite so fortunate. The courts taking up cases of medical negligence is a good omen. Perhaps it can play some part in offering justice to wronged people, and encouraging doctors to exercise greater care and display more conscience when treating the people who turn to them in search of relief.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 5^th, 2011.