Bhubaneswar, Dec. 30: The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has formed a crisis management team to help in the massive rescue effort going on in the tsunami-hit areas of the country and abroad.
The group is headed by IMA secretary-general Vinay Agarwal and chaired by national president Sudipto Roy. It comprises state committee presidents and general secretaries of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala besides the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
IMA delegates, who attended the three-day 69th annual conference of the association here, donated their travel allowance and prize money received at award ceremonies to the Emergency Relief Fund of the association.
Sources in the IMA, which also constituted special teams for the tsunami-hit areas during the conference, said it has sent a three-member doctors? team to the Andamans. The team, headed by Dr Vijaykumar, has reached Port Blair, Roy confirmed.
The IMA has also instructed its chapters in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh to send teams to Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka to provide emergency medical services.
Roy said reports received from the tsunami-hit areas suggest that the devastation has been enormous and will require emergency medical services as well as large-scale public healthcare follow-up interventions. ?Our teams have reached these places?, he added.
The conference, which ended yesterday, also opposed the Law Commission?s proposal to replace hanging by neck in case of death penalty with lethal injection saying a medical practitioner cannot take anyone?s life. The strong opposition to the commission?s proposal came during the central council meeting of the IMA.
?The Law Commission has observed that hanging by neck is brutal and should be replaced by the more sophisticated lethal injection. This is against the oath that doctors take before being inducted into the service ? that they will strive only to save lives,? Agarwal said. The recommendation has caused confusion in the medical fraternity with its ?obvious contradiction? of the basic nature of professional duties expected of doctors, he added.
Roy said the association has written to the Union law ministry on its resentment over the issue. ?No doctor will be willing to inject a lethal dose to anybody even if the person is facing a death penalty for the most heinous crime,? he added.
