BHUBANESWAR : Days after Orissa High Court dismissed petitions filed by license holders to run on-campus medicine stores, the state government has initiated measures to vacate them from the premises of public hospitals.
The Health and Family Welfare department has directed superintendents, deans and principals of two medical colleges and CDMOs to issue vacation notices to the campus medicine stores for vacating the premises in next 15 days. In 2015, although the department had directed that no extension of licence of on-campus medical stores would be permitted and no new medical stores opened for implementation of Niramaya scheme, certain campus medicine stores are still operating from the government hospitals across the state despite expiry of their licence agreements in pursuant to interim orders of the high court.
Citing that the HC in a recent order has vacated all interim orders passed in the matters and dismissed all petitions in this regard, Health secretary Shalini Pandit has asked the medical college authorities and CDMOs to take immediate steps to vacate the stores from the campuses. The officials have also been asked to recover all dues pending as per the last executed licence agreements and take in accordance with law to recover possession of the premises immediately after expiry of the 15-day period.
The Health department has also sought a compliance report with regard to the issuance of notices to campus medicine stores within two working days without fail. As many as 101 on-campus medicine shops are operating in 24 districts. These are located on the premises of PHCs, CHCs, sub-divisional hospitals, district headquarters hospitals and medical college and hospitals.
Earlier, the high court had upheld the decision of the state government not to extend the licences of medicine stores set up on the premises of government medical colleges and hospitals after certain campus medicine stores had approached the high court assailing the department’s communication issued on February 27, 2015. On April 19, the high court had dismissed all the petitions and hailed Odisha government’s Niramaya scheme stating the free medical care policy by the state marks a monumental step forward in prioritising public health and welfare.