March 25, 2019
In a welcome step, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education
& Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh has announced that it would
implement the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016
in the prospectus of the next session starting July 2019.
It’s a sad state of affairs that over two years after the Act came into
being, implementation remains a sorry state of affairs in many aspects,
including education, with some of India’s leading medical college hospitals
failing in this aspect.
Something that disability rights crusader Dr Satendra Singh
had raised in a letter to J P Nadda, Minister of Health & Family
Welfare (MoHFW) in a letter in December 2018. Dr Singh drew
attention to three institutions of national importance under MoHFW that were
violating the RPWD Act 2016 in post graduate MD/MS courses for the January
2019 session. These were:
In response, the PGIMER in a letter dated 23 March 2019, has said it would
change the prospectus to reflect the Act as well as appoint a Grievance
Redressal Officer.
The letter signed by the Registrar of PGIMER, says “The case regarding
implementation of Rights of persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 was placed
before the competent authority and it has been decided by the authority that
the Institute has implemented the Rights of persons with Disabilities Act,
2016 in the prospectus of July, 2019 session. Further, the Public Grievance
Redressal Committee has been constituted and Professor Arvind Rajwanshi, Dean
(Research) is appointed as a Chairman of the Committee.”
The move to do without any ministry level intervention has been welcomed by
Dr Singh, but he is disappointed by the silence from the others.
All of these three are autonomous Institutes of national importance
directly under MOHFW. They can even do more than the bare minimum required.
That they haven’t done the basic shows their lack of knowledge of the law
and the will to be agents of change. JIPMER hasn’t responded. Same is
true for AIIMS Delhi which even went to court to deny an acid attack
survivor a job in the nursing profession. The new AIIMS centres in Raipur
and Gorakhpur responded to my requests to amend guidelines on one leg and
both leg criteria but if AIIMS Delhi were to send out a signal to respect
diversity, it will be easier for the other AIIMS to follow. – Dr
Satendra Singh, Founder, Doctors with Disabilities
As prime educational institutions of excellence, these centres have the
opportunity to effect a change in societal attitudes towards people with
disabilities. “Global literature shows that doctors with disabilities are
more empathetic as they have the lived experience and can certainly improve
the doctor-patient relationship”, points out Dr Singh.
Worldwide too, there is growing awareness of the need to sensitize medical
trainees to the kind of barriers that people with disabilities face and to
recognize that the people best placed to remove those barriers are doctors
with disabilities themselves.
Source: https://newzhook.com/story/21770
