Unhealthy controversy

Govt should engage protestors to make Right to Health work

The doctors’ strike in Rajasthan, which has all but paralysed medical services in the state, offers in microcosm an example of the parlous state of health care in India, caught between a grossly inadequate public health infrastructure and a profit-driven private health care industry. The doctors were protesting against the Right to Health Act, passed by the Rajasthan Assembly last week. The principal point of contention is a provision in the law that mandates all hospitals, public and private, must offer emergency treatment without any prepayment. The Act says the state government will reimburse hospitals. But the protesting doctors, who