Treating The Injured.

The Sindh Cabinet has approved the Sindh Injured Persons Compulsory Medical Treatment (Amal Umer) Act 2019 ten months after it was passed by the provincial assembly and more than a year after Amal Umer's death. While the Sindh Chief Minister's assent for a more detailed legislation on the issue is welcome, it is important to understand that the problem of injured persons being denied emergency services until medico-legal formalities have been completed is not something that will be easily solved with a new law in place.

Sindh already had a very similar law in force since 2014, as does Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; Balochistan and Punjab have had more or less the same law since 2004. The new Act is a positive step in that it categorically states that all hospitals must ensure proper care to those injured and increases the monetary penalty of those found in violation but begs the question of how the treatment was denied to Amal in the first place. There was already a law in place that carries a potential three-year prison sentence, as opposed to...