Vigilance wing for Health in Kerala

Kerala government has proposed to set up a Vigilance Wing in the Health Department to monitor private practice by doctors and crackdown on quackery.

Composition and functions:

A police officer of the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police is likely to head the Vigilance Wing.

• The Vigilance Wing will detect private practice by medical education service doctors, the crackdown on quackery and unearth ethically dubious financial relationships between State doctors and diagnostic clinics, pharmacies and health care firms in the private sector.
• It will also monitor healthcare advertising and flag false claims aired by healthcare companies to mass-market pharmaceutical and Ayurveda drugs without doctor’s prescription as off-the-shelf cures for a wide range of ailments.
• The wing will also prosecute self-styled healers who exploit their influence in the social media to fuel unhealthy scepticism about government’s vaccination programmes and offer resistance against the State’s efforts to prevent the spread of global viral outbreaks such as the Corona pandemic.

Need:

There were complaints against doctors regarding the violation of private practice ban and matters involving medico-legal issues.

Concerns: Many in the medical community have objected to intrusive vigilance inspections.

Sources: the Hindu.