Ensure smooth healthcare services for specially-abled, ex-RS member from Punjab urges govt

Former Rajya Sabha member Avinash Rai Khanna has written to the Union health ministry and Punjab state health department to ensure that persons with disabilities get the right of priority in all government and private health institutions

Former Rajya Sabha member Avinash Rai Khanna has written to the Union health ministry and Punjab state health department to ensure that persons with disabilities get the right of priority in attendance and medical treatment in all government and private health institutions as envisaged under Right of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016.

The former RS member has forwarded the representation of a human rights activist that persons with disabilities get the right of priority in all government and private health institutions. (File Photo ( Representational) )

Forwarding a representation of human right activist advocate Navdeep Sud who also runs charitable trusts for the welfare of disabled, Khanna has urged the governments to take appropriate measures for implementation of the law as disabled and their families face inconvenience at health facilities while waiting for their turn as they were not treated with priority as mandated by the law.

“The government had enacted the law to give effect to the United Nations Convention on the Right of Persons with Disabilities and the matters concerned therewith, even seven years after its enactment, the disabled in India have not got even the most valuable right of priority in treatment”, he has written. He has suggested that the Union and the state governments must at least three inexpensive steps including display of disability boards in the hospitals, special counters for the disabled in the OPDs and creating awareness among the doctors and disabled persons about the latter’s special rights.