Assam has become the first state in the country to enact a legislation seeking to ensure right to health for everyone in the state.

The Assam Public Health Bill, 2010, which was passed unanimously by the Assam Assembly yesterday, made it mandatory for all government and private hospitals and health centres, including nursing homes, to provide free health care services to a patient seeking emergency treatment.

The hospitals would have to maintain appropriate protocol of treatment for an emergency patient for the first 24 hours as per provisions of the legislation.

During discussion of the bill, health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said the Centre had assured the government of providing required corpus funds for emergency treatment with private sector healthcare establishments having to bear only 10 per cent of the total fund.

The Act will come into force from January next as framing rules for recovery of the expenditure would take some time, Sarma said.

The legislation also sought to guarantee people's right to appropriate and efficacious medicines and right to effective measures for prevention, treatment and control of epidemic and endemic diseases.

The minister announced that children with holes in hearts would be flown to and from Bangalore for surgery at the Narayan Hrudayalaya Hospital with the government bearing the entire expenditure of Rs 2.5 lakh per child.