Mumbai:The Delhi High Court has said the Union health ministry must respond by January 20 to a contempt petition filed by a health activist against the diagnostic services offered by online aggregators such as Amazon and others.
Lawyers representing Rohit Jain, who is a pathologist and RTI activist, said the “illegal health services” are operating in Delhi in violation of the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010, and other applicable laws.
Earlier in 2020, in response to a Public Interest Litigation, the Court had ordered the authorities to initiate action against illegal online health service aggregators operating in Delhi.
Amazon did not respond to ET’s queries.
The contempt petition notes in June Amazon India launched “Amazon Diagnostics,” an at-home lab test booking service in partnership with Orange Health Labs, covering over 450 PIN codes including Delhi.
Amazon’s service is operational in Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Hyderabad and offers home sample collection, test bookings, and digital diagnostic reports through the Amazon app. However, it added, the service provides home collection and diagnostic reports without registration under the Clinical Establishments Act, 2010, and without complying with the medico-legal statutory requirements.
An online e-commerce website cannot be categorised as a clinical establishment, the petition said. It described those establishments as a hospital, maternity home, nursing home, dispensary, clinic, sanatorium or an institution by whatever name called that offers services, facilities requiring diagnosis, treatment or care for illness, etc.
“The continued inaction of the respondents has resulted in grave risk to public health and amounts to wilful disobedience of this Hon’ble Court’s binding directions,” the petition added. In addition to the health ministry, the contempt petition has named the Delhi government, the Director General of Health Services, and the Indian Council of Medical Research.
Responding to a similar contempt petition, in 2023, the government had categorically assured that they were committed to ensuring strict compliance with the directions (of the court) and that no illegal or unauthorized laboratory would be permitted to operate within Delhi. They further undertook that appropriate action would be taken against all such violators, past and present, as expeditiously as possible.
In 2021, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the union health ministry had issued a notification to the state governments to initiate action against illegal online health service aggregators that are in violation of the applicable laws, such as a due registration for performing the tests. “Certain online health service aggregators, operational in various parts of the country, may perhaps be neither providing any details of laboratories, on behalf of which, they are providing services, nor their registration status, including compliance to minimum standards,” the letter had noted. It added the details of qualified staff, as required for running the laboratory services, may also not be available on their online portals.
“If such instances are happening, then it is a matter of grave concern, as it affects the health and safety of citizens, who may obtain services from these online aggregators and may subsequently be aggrieved,” the letter signed by Rajesh Bhushan, then secretary in the health ministry said.
