SC notice to Centre on plea against allowing homeopathic, Indian medicine doctors to perform surgery

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre to respond to a plea challenging validity of the Centre's permission to practitioners of Indian System of Medicine and homeopathy to practice modern medicine and perform surgeries.

A bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and Sudhanshu Dhulia issued notice to the Union government on a petition filed by Association of Medical Consultants (AMC), Mumbai.

The court tagged the plea with a similar petition filed by the Indian Medical Association and fixed the matter for hearing on November 4.

Advocate Sunil Fernandes on behalf of the petitioner contended allowing practitioners of Indian system of medicine and homeopathy to practice allopathy and perform surgeries would cause grave prejudice to the public health, medical infrastructure and right to life including the right to correct and prompt medical aid as enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The petitioner association, representing 11,000 doctors through its medico-legal chairman Dr Sudhir Gurunath Naik challenged validity of the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Amendment Regulations, 2020, thereby, allowing PG scholars of Shalya and Shalakya to perform 58 surgical procedures after completion of Post Graduate Degree in Ayurveda stream of medicine.

The plea claimed the development would foster an age-old issue of quackery, without laying down any adequate mechanism to deal with the problem of non-qualified and untrained doctors prescribing modern medicine.

The association also referred to a Supreme Court judgement in Poonam Verma vs Ashwin Patel, (1996) to state that courts have time and again laid down that prescribing allopathic medicines without adequate qualification and experience is an ‘unfair trade practice’ while the failure to provide explanation of the side-effects of a prescribed allopathic medicine amounts to medical negligence, attracting criminal liability.

"This court has cautioned that, employing traditional medical practitioners who do not possess the required qualification, skill and experience to provide allopathic treatment in hospitals and to treat a patient in emergencies is gross negligence," it said.