New Delhi, Oct. 8 -- The Supreme Court (SC) on Thursday called for a permanent funding mechanism to help Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) patients meet the prohibitive cost of treatment, saying their access to life-saving therapies cannot depend on sporadic charity or one-off government grants.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, along with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, asked senior advocate and amicus curiae Aparajita Singh to draw up a comprehensive proposal for a dedicated corpus that can receive regular contributions and provide sustained financial assistance to patients.

"We need a regular channel, a permanent system," CJI Surya Kant observed, stressing the need for an automatic and continuously maintained fu...