This petition is regarding ensuring care for women who are pregnant and in labour by stopping hospitals from making COVID 19 test result as a mandatory criteria for admission and care. There are several incidents in the past few weeks where hospitals (both public and private) have denied care for pregnant women including delivery services, for those in labor due to unavailability of a "negative COVID 19 test report". And this continues including an incident witnessed and supported last day by the team I work with in Bangalore. The lady had to travel across 8 hospitals in labor to finally get admitted and fortunately she delivered a healthy baby. "No emergency procedure (including deliveries) should be delayed for lack of test" is mentioned in BOLD in the ICMR guidelines on 18th May, but many hospitals in Bangalore and several other cities (as per news clippings) are still denying care. All pregnant women have to be tested irrespective of symptoms was added as one of the criteria of testing - this is to ensure good health for the mother and child but interpreting that to "mandatory testing to determine admission" for convenience is against human rights. The testing centres are burdened by the rising number of people turning positive and hence we can't afford to shift the burden of having a test report on pregnant women and families. "Asymptomatic pregnant women should be tested in the health facilities where they were expected to deliver and all arrangements should be made to collect and transfer samples to testing facilities. Women should not be referred for lack of testing facility" is another statement from ICMR document dated 20/04/2020. Recently even the Delhi Government had to respond to the High court with reference to a PIL regarding time taken for testing pregnant women and stated that, “As regard to admission in hospitals for in-patient interventions including surgery, delivery etc., prior COVID-19 test is not mandatory and in emergent situations, the treatment must not be denied for want of COVID-19 test results. The test may be conducted simultaneously as per ICMR testing strategy. However, the pregnant woman if found positive on testing is ideally to be transferred to dedicated COVID-19 hospitals for further management”.

But this is not effectively what is in action. So as a worried doctor and public health professional, I plead for your support to demand the MoHFW, BBMP, and other officials to make a strong statement that strict action would be taken against hospitals who deny care for pregnant women for lack of test result available.