Madhya Pradesh High Court Raps Health Officials For Slow Digitisation Of Gas Tragedy Survivors’ Data

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The principal bench of the Jabalpur High Court has reprimanded officials of the health department for their slow progress in the digitisation of medical records for Bhopal gas tragedy survivors. The court's criticism came during a hearing of the Bhopal Gas Information and Action and Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sagathan, among others.

Chief Justice Suresh Kumar Kait and Justice Vivek Jain, who were hearing the case, directed that the Secretary of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, along with the Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh and the Director of Bhopal Memorial Hospital Research Centre (BMHRC), must meet within one week to finalise an action plan.

The aim is to complete the digitisation process at the earliest. The court has set the next hearing for February 18, during which a compliance report will be submitted. In response to the court's directions, a compliance affidavit was presented in court.

The affidavit stated that medical records prior to 2014 are extremely old, requiring about 3,000 pages to be scanned per day. The estimated completion time for this process is approximately 550 days, though a more precise timeline can be established once the work begins.

The affidavit also stated that a proposal for establishing a cloud server under the e-hospital project had been obtained from the National Informatics Centre (NIC). However, the proposal is pending financial approval from the Finance Department, with funds expected to be allocated in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

Once approved, the scanned records will be uploaded to the cloud server. The NIC’s proposal indicates that the entire digitisation process could be completed within 12 months.