Bangalore: For persons with disabilities, a disability certificate is their only means of access to benefits and concessions. However, they are put through endless harassment to acquire one.

Firstly, medical boards in Government hospitals in Bangalore and some of the district hospitals, authorised to issue medical certificates to persons with disabilities, are not working. In their place, individual doctors issue the certificates, often allegedly for a price.

The Office of the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities has received no less than 25 complaints from people with disabilities about hospitals in Bangalore and the district hospitals which do no have medical boards to issue disability certificates.

The Government of Karnataka constituted medical boards to issue these certificates in all the 27 districts in 2003. This board consists of an ophthalmologist, orthopaedic surgeon, ENT specialist, psychiatrist, skin specialist and a general surgeon.

The certificate has to be issued by the board in keeping with the guidelines for evaluation of various disabilities and procedure for certification approved by the Centre.

"We have come to know that individual doctors in Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital and K.C. General Hospital in Bangalore, and in district hospitals in Bagalkot, Belgaum, Davangere and Udupi are issuing disability certificates and the medical boards in these hospitals are not operational," L. Krishnamurthy, State Commissioner for Disabilities told The Hindu . He said that because of the intervention of the Disabilities Commissioner's office, the Medical Superintendent of Bowring Hospital issued a circular dated August 24, 2006 asking individual doctors not issue medical certificates, but despite that the same had been issued to two persons by a doctor.

According to the Commissioner's office, the NIMHANS is one of the few institutions, which has a proper medical board. The Institute has set up a separate medical board, consisting of heads of the departments of psychiatry, neurology and psychiatric and neuro-rehabilitation to issue disability certificates to mentally ill persons.

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