Doctors over 70 will have to update credentials by January 31

TNN | Nov 30, 2018, 08.16 AM IST


 

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Medical Council has asked doctors over the age of 70 to update their credentials by January 31. If they don’t, they will be termed “dormant and inaccessible” practioners and barred from practising.

The move was as a part of efforts to revise the state medical registry, the council said. The state has more than 15,000 senior doctors – those 70 or older as of June 1, 2018.

A notification from the council published in the Tamil Nadu Gazette said these doctors must send in their registration certificates, aadhaar cards and proof of practice as prescribed on the council website before January 31, 2019. Those who don’t would be moved to the category of “dormant and inaccessible practitioners” from February 1, 2019. “With this they will delisted from the active registry and will not be able to practise medicine. To get back to the registry, they will have to furnish details. Unless we do this, we will not be able to keep an active and functional registry of doctors,” said council president Dr K Senthil. “To make it convenient for the seniors, we have asked them to send the details by post,” Dr Senthil said.

The council has more than 1.4 lakh medical practitioners as members. “Some of them are in their nineties and we don’t know if they are still actively practising medicine,” he said. The council has urged the relatives of doctors who are dead to intimate it through email or post along with a copy of the registration certificate and the death certificate.

An active registry, Dr Senthil said, would give the council and the state an idea about the doctor-patient ratio. They would also get details of doctors in particular geographical locations that can be put to use during emergencies, he said.

Seniors, however, have been exempted from the mandatory 90-hour attendance at continuing medical education programmes. Younger doctors, who don’t have a 90-hour attendance at continuing medical education programmes for the last five years, will have to pay a fine and complete the deficit hours in 2019, the Council said.

Another cazette notification, published on Wednesday, said all doctors in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands must comply with the code of ethics of the council that mandated 30 credit hours – 90 absolute hours – of attending medical education programmes conducted by recognised or accredited organisations. The council, on September 30, resolved to implement the clause strictly, the notification said.

Doctors have been asked to update their credit hours accrued from June 1, 2012, to May 31, 2017, and also periodically update their credit hours post June 1, 2017. “Doctors have to pay Rs50 for each participant for carrying forward deficit credit hours for the ne-xt year,” said Dr Senthil. “If the hours are not completed in the next year too, the fine has to paid once again. We kept the fine amount low because our intention is not to punish but to encourage doctors to complete courses and update them,” Dr Senthil said.

Block health officer arrested for taking Rs 25,000 bribe from Tuticorin college

TNN | Nov 30, 2018, 03.58 PM IST MADURAI:

Sleuths of the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) arrested a block health supervisor in Tuticorin district of Tamil Nadu on Friday after he was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe of Rs 25,000 from a private college to issue a sanitary certificate. 

The arrested officer has been identified as Alvarappan, 55, who is the block health supervisor at Eral.

Sources said in September, G U Pope College of Education at Sawyerpuram in Tuticorin applied for the sanitary certificate. As the process of issuing the certificate had got delayed, college authorities approached the health department officials, who in turn told them that it would be issued after inspection and certification by the block health supervisor.

On behalf of the college, staff member Jayakumar met Alvarappan, who demanded Rs 65,000 as bribe to issue the certificate. Later, he reduced the bribe amount to Rs 25,000 when the college refused to pay the amount.

The college management decided to deal the issue legally. Jayakumar lodged a complaint with the DVAC on Thursday evening.

As directed by DVAC deputy superintendent of police Dharmaraj, chemical coated currencies were given to Jayakumar so that he could hand them over to the official.

On Friday morning, Alvarappan came to the entrance of the private college where a team of six DVAC sleuths, led by inspector A Annamalai, caught him red-handed when he received the chemical coated currencies.

Alvarappan was booked under Section 7(A) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Southern Railway to run Tejas train between Chennai Egmore and Madurai

TNN | Nov 30, 2018, 06.03 PM IST

 
CHENNAI: Southern Railway will operate a swanky Tejas train between Chennai Egmore and Madurai five days a week. The train will run at an average speed of 70kmph during the day-time, official sources said. 

The train, which will be started within a week, will have features like infotainment, luxurious seats, WiFi and modular toilets.

It will start from Chennai Egmore around 6am and reach Madurai in six and a half hours. It would return to Chennai in the night, official sources said.


The Tejas rake was churned out of the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai on Friday. It will reach Southern Railway's Villivakkam yard on Friday night. Initially, it would be run as a special and then regularised, said official sources.

Man cheats senior citizen at ATM in Chennai, escapes with Rs 20,000

TNN | Nov 30, 2018, 06.21 PM IST

 

CHENNAI: An unidentified man escaped with Rs 20,000 from a senior citizen after diverting his attention at an ATM in Virugambakkam here on Friday.

Thiruvengadam, 65, was at an SBI ATM when an unidentified man approached him stating that the ATM was not working properly and that he would help him withdraw money.

Thiruvengadam handed over his debit card to the man and revealed the PIN number. The man inserted the card in the ATM and entered the PIN number. After sometime, he told Thiruvengadam that he could withdraw cash.

Thiruvengadam withdraw Rs 10,000 cash. When he reached home, Thiruvengadam saw an SMS on his cellphone which suggested that he had withdrawn Rs 20,000 using the card just before withdrawing Rs 10,000.

Thiruvengadam lodged a complaint with the Virugambakkam police, who launched a hunt for the miscreant.

HC grants two week parole to lifer for conjugal visit

TNN | Dec 1, 2018, 12.12 AM IST

Chennai: The Madras high court has permitted a life convict to go on two weeks’ parole on a plea by his wife saying it was her right to have conjugal relations.

“Conjugal visit leads to strong family bonds and keeps the family functional rather than the family becoming dysfunctional due to prolonged isolation and lack of sexual contact,” a division bench of Justice C T Selvam and Justice P Ramathilagam quoted from a recent Madurai bench order while granting parole to Perumal, 28, of Tirunelveli, who married Muthumari, 23, on May 2 this year while out on parole.

Perumal was arrested for murder in 2008 by the Manoor police, Tirunelveli. In 2010, an additional sessions court convicted him and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Initially lodged in Palayamkottai prison Perumal was later transferred to Vellore Central Prison and then to Cuddalore Central prison.

An appeal moved by Perumal challenging the conviction was dismissed by the high court and a second appeal is pending before the Supreme Court.

Muthumari recently approached the court claiming that her husband was eligible for emergency leave under the Tamil Nadu Suspension of Sentence Rules for a conjugal visit.

Further quoting from the Madurai bench order, the judges added that man was a social animal and he needed a family as well as a society to live in. Man needs both to share his emotions and feelings. Being human beings, prisoners also would like to share their problems with their life partner as well as with society. Just because they are termed prisoners, their right to dignity cannot be deprived.

Out of four theories of punishment, India had accepted the theory of reformation also. If that is to be done, prisons have to be transformed as homes for the purpose of giving training morally as well as intellectually, so that the prisoners are denuded of the qualities of a criminal, the order added.

“Psychologists and psychiatrists believe that the frustration, tension, ill-feelings and heart burnings can be reduced and a human being can be better constructed if allowed conjugal relationship even rarely,” the court said. Therefore, while considering the merits and demerits of allowing conjugal visits or permitting leave for the purpose of artificial insemination, the advantages are more than the disadvantages, it added.

Dependent siblings of accident victims too are eligible for compensation, says HC

TNN | Dec 1, 2018, 12.13 AM IST

Chennai: Noting that every legal representative who suffers because of the death of a person due to a motor vehicle accident should have a remedy of compensation, Madras high court has said even brothers and sisters of such person are eligible for compensation if their dependency on the deceased is proved.
It is settled principle that the liberal view must be taken to legal heirs of the deceased who died intestate. If the heirs are mother, married and unmarried sisters, married sister will not be considered as dependent. When there are dependents and non-dependents, only dependents are entitled to compensation, Justice M V Muralidaran said.

In the case on hand, the appellant in her evidence deposed that before the accident the deceased was residing with her and there were no other legal heirs. No contra evidence was adduced by the insurance company to disprove the version of the appellant.

Since the appellant has filed relationship certificate to show that she is the sister of the deceased and in the absence of any other legal heirs, it is to be presumed that the appellant is the only dependent of the deceased. The appellant claimed as living together with the support of deceased being the only legal representative is entitled under personal law to compensation to the extent of loss of estate and to the extent of loss of dependency, the judge added.

Doctor declines to sign part of testimony

TNN | Dec 1, 2018, 06.09 AM IST



 

CHENNAI: For probably the first time in the proceedings of the Justice (retd) A Arumughaswamy commission, a doctor has declined to sign a part of the testimony recorded during Thursday’s deposition, sources said.

Dr K Madan Kumar, a cardio-thoracic surgeon wi-th Apollo hospital, who was with former chief minister J Jayalalithaa throughout her Extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) procedure from December 4, 2016 till her death the next day, did not sign page three of his testimony recorded, a source said.

This was because he disagreed with how his deposition regarding the time-frame of the sternotomy procedure leading up to the ECMO after her cardiac arrest on December 4 was recorded, sources said. The commission had raised doubts regarding how Jayalalithaa’s brain could have survived the time taken by the medical team to set up ECMO, as the brain would not survive without oxygenated blood for more than three minutes and the set-up would take 25 minutes. A source said the commission’s line of questioning was to ask whether the lung was functional, without which even artificial pumping of blood would not yield oxygenated blood to the brain.

Kumar told the commission that the pumping of blood was never stopped as the incision made during sternotomy was done in a ‘synchronised manner’, Badsha said.

Madan Kumar had also told the commission that at around 3:30am on December 5, 2016, around 11 hours after Jayalalithaa suffered cardiac arrest, she showed intrinsic heart rhythm for 30 minutes, counsel for Apollo Maimoona Badsha quoted the doctor as saying.

On Friday, the commission sprung a surprise by summoning Dr R Jayanthi, dean of the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH). She was asked whether the hospital had performed sternotomy procedure or had the equipment for ECMO, sources said. She deposed saying the hospital did not have the equipment and that they had not performed the sternotomy procedure.

Based on her academic knowledge, Jayanthi also gave a deposition regarding the sternotomy procedure being synchronised procedure in stages where the pumping of blood is not stopped, in effect concurring with Dr Madan’s deposition, multiple sources said.

The doctor also said they do not perform the CPR procedure in the Critical Care Unit (CCU), a source quoted her as saying.