The High Court today directed the government to take necessary steps for providing emergency medical services to all critically injured persons in government and private hospitals across the country

In response to a writ petition, the court ordered the government to submit a report on the progress of ensuring emergency medical services for traffic accident victims under the National Road Safety Strategic Action Plan 2014-2016 in three months.

Secretaries to the ministries of health, and road, transport and bridges were also directed to propose guidelines for the operation and management of emergency medical services, including the operation of an emergency reporting number, and to take measures to create public awareness of such services through the press and electronic media, petitioners’ lawyer Sara Hossain and Deputy Attorney General Motaher Hossain Sazu told The Daily Star.

The HC also issued a rule asking the government authorities concerned to explain in four weeks as to why the failure to ensure the provision by existing hospitals and clinics, whether governmental or private, of emergency medical services to critically injured persons should not be declared illegal.

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The HC bench of Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and Md Iqbal Kabir came up with the order rule after a holding hearing on a writ petition filed seeking its orders on the government to ensure emergency medical services by hospitals, clinics and doctors across the country.

The petition was filed by Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust and Syed Saifuddin Kamal, a social entrepreneur, who as a ‘good samaritan’ had tried to ensure emergency medical services from local hospitals for a young man called Arafat, a bus helper, who fell from a bus and was killed when the bus ran over him on the Airport Road near Banani Dhaka in last month.

They filed the petition based on a report published on The Daily Star on January 24 under a headline “Hearts of stone” that narrated how three prominent private hospitals in Dhaka had refused to provide emergency medical services to critically injured Arafat.

The respondents are the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges, the Directorate of Health Services and the Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council.