The New Indian Express, Chennai Published: 22nd April 2016 04:03 AM
CHENNAI: Provision of ramps may be made mandatory in all government and private hospital buildings having ground plus first floor and above, a Committee constituted by Madras High Court has suggested.
For the old and existing buildings, one side space could be used for providing ramps. Wherever there are multiple buildings (group developments) in one campus, a ramp in one building may be constructed with connecting corridors to the other buildings.
While passing interim orders on a PIL from Jawaharlal Shanmugham of Tiruvanmiyur, the first bench of Chief Justice SK Kaul and Justice MM Sundresh on March 7 directed State Health Secretary J Radhakrishnan to hold meetings with representatives and stake holders of other departments. Accordingly, Radhakrishnan conducted meetings on March 28, 29 and April 5 with the representatives of the Medical Council of India, CMDA, Fire and Rescue Service department and the Chief Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities and arrived at certain conclusions and submitted the same in the form of an affidavit before the bench on Thursday.
After perusing the affidavit, the bench directed the government, in particular the Health Department to formulate the final policy on providing ramp facilities in all the hospital buildings and to indicate the time frame for implementation of the same.
The policy should be put into public domain before July 12, a week before the next date of hearing i.e. July 19, the bench added. The PIL prayed the court to direct all the authorities to make provision of ramp facilities as a mandatory rule in government and private hospitals for evacuation of patients and other staff in case of emergencies. In this connection, petitioner cited a fire in a private hospital in Kolkata, in which 85 patients and 4 staff had died.
