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The Supreme Court will hear on June 24, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a direction to the Centre to send a team of experts to contain the Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) outbreak which claimed lives of over 100 children in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, and to ask the state to provide monetary compensation to the victims’ families.
The PIL filed by Advocate Manohar Pratap and Sanpreet Singh Ajmani was mentioned on Wednesday for urgent hearing before a bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Surya Kant. The court agreed to hear it at the earliest.
The petitioners charged that the state and the Centre were neglecting children’s deaths which were happenning “due to unavailability of medicines, proper care and lack of intensive care units in the hospitals of the area.”
The doctors’ strike which coincided with the deaths had also hampered efforts to provide them with proper care, they said, adding “there is no availability of doctors, beds, intensive care units, medical professionals to deal with an epidemic level situation which has resulted in more than 126 reported deaths of children in state of Bihar particularly in Muzaffarpur and its adjoining areas.”
The petitioners requested the apex court to direct the state government to give compensation of Rs 10 lakh to families of victims who lost their lives due to “negligence of the state machinery”.
The PIL also wants the court to ask the Centre and states to widely publish and advertise the preventive steps and first aid to be given to the AES affected.
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