COVID-19: Delhi HC to hear plea on ban on illegal online labs

New Delhi, Aug 4 (IANS) The Delhi High Court is likely to hear on Wednesday, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a ban on the collection of diagnostic samples for COVID-19 testing by online health service aggregators posing as “medical diagnostic laboratories”.

The petition filed by Rohit Jain, a practicing pathologist in Jaipur, through his lawyer Shashank Deo Sudhi seeks the court’s direction to issue guidelines for registration and minimum standards for sample collection centres operated by online aggregators.

Jain in his petition further sought banning of the illegal online health service aggregators which are not registered under Clinical Establishment (Registration & Regulation) Act 2010 or under any other regulations and without any medico legal liability for collecting and testing the patient samples for diagnosis.

The plea which is likely to come up before the court for hearing on Wednesday claimed that large number of unauthorised pathological labs are being run by under-qualified technicians who are providing totally unscientific diagnostic test reports rendering the lives of common and innocent citizens vulnerable based on false and fake diagnostic reports across the NCT of Delhi.

The petitioner further alleged that many of the online health service aggregators are also not following the Bio-Medical Waste Management Rules, 2016 for proper disposal of bio-medical waste. “The illegal and fake online health service aggregators are not registered with state pollution control boards or any pollution control committee as prescribed under the law,” the petition said further.

–IANS

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