Police Outposts to New Ordinance: How Kerala Plans To Ensure Doctors' Safety

The CM said that the ordinance will be issued during the next Assembly session to ensure safety of health workers.

Doctors and medical students in Kerala staged a protest against the brutal stabbing to death of Dr Vandana Das. 

(Photo: PTI)

The Kerala government on Thursday, 11 May, announced that it would be issuing an ordinance to amend the Hospital Protection Act and would be setting up police outposts in major hospitals.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the ordinance will be issued during the next Assembly session to ensure the safety of health workers.

This comes in the light of the brutal stabbing to death of 22-year-old Dr Vandana Das at Kerala's Kottarakkara Taluk Hospital on Wednesday. A patient brought in by the police stabbed her fatally six times on the head, neck, and spine using surgical scissors.

The CM announced the new measures at a meeting convened on Thursday evening, 11 May. Here's what the government will be doing to ensure the safety of doctors:

• Police outposts to be set up in major hospitals across the state.

• Amendments to strengthen Kerala Healthcare Service Persons and Healthcare Service Institutions (Prevention of Violence and Damage to Property) Act 2012 will be brought in

• Necessary changes to be brought in the definitions of health institutions and health workers from time to time in the existing law.

• Petitions and suggestions to the government by medical organisations to be considered

• Hospitals will be divided into three categories for safety purposes; medical colleges, district government hospitals, general hospitals, women and child hospitals to get police outposts

• Other hospitals to be monitored by the police

• CCTV cameras to be installed in all hospitals

• Security audits in hospitals every six months

• Special security system to be put in place to take accused persons and persons of violent nature to hospitals

• Congestion to be controlled in and around hospitals