Indian doctors protest poor security in hospitals
Express solidarity with doctors who were assaulted in Kolkata following a patient’s death
New Delhi: Doctors, including kin of top Trinamool Congress leaders, held protests across the country Friday in solidarity with their agitating colleagues in West Bengal even as Union Health Minister Harshvardhan and relatives of patients urged both sides to end the impasse, which has crippled the state’s health care system.
Doctors in Delhi’s AIIMS and other prominent hospitals, in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana as well as other places, especially AIIMS, stayed away from work, demanding justice for their Bengal counterparts and enhanced security for practitioners.
However, in Bengal, the situation worsened as in the wake of cease-work at state-run hospitals, more than 200 doctors of four medical colleges, including the NRS Medical College and Hospital — the epicentre of the protests after a junior doctor was beaten up by attendants of an old patient who died, submitted mass resignations even as patients and their kin appealed for an end to the agitation.
Terming West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is like a “guardian”, a “mother”, renowned actor-filmmaker Aparna Sen appealed to her to “change her stance a bit” and take a more humane view of the threats faced by doctors.
Sen was part of a group of intellectuals from the state who yesterday stood by the agitating junior doctors at the NRS Medical College and Hospital.
Mamata’s nephew Abesh Banerjee, who is a medical student, came out in support of the protesting doctors.
Earlier, Kolkata Mayor and state Minister Firhad Hakim’s daughter, a doctor, criticised the government’s handling of the ongoing doctors’ strike and said medicos had the right to “peaceful protest” and “safety at work”.
In a Facebook post, Shabba Hakim asked people to question why “goons were still surrounding hospitals and beating up doctors”.
Amid the crisis, Union Health Harshvardhan appealed to both the agitating doctors to end their strike and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to withdraw her ultimatum against the doctors in her state, which triggered strikes across the country.
Urging the doctors to end their strike in the larger interest of the society, he said urged the government to pass a law that makes any attack on doctors a non-bailable offence.
“Heinous repeated attacks on doctors across India esp WBengal have led to this situation.Govt must pass a Law to make any attack on Docs a non-bailable offence with min 12 yr jail. Draconian Clinical Establishment Act that treats Docs as criminals must be withdrawn,” he tweeted.
Around 4,500 Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) stopped attending to patients in all the 26 government hospitals in the state simultaneously on Friday.
A large number of doctors gathered outside Mumbai’s KEM Hospital with banners and posters, while similar protests were held in Pune, Aurangabad and Nagpur.
In Delhi, senior and junior resident doctors of several government hospitals also went on the one day token strike and boycotted work. Except for emergency services, there was full shutdown of all outpatient departments (OPDs), routine operation theatre services and ward visits, the AIIMS association said.
Resident doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Safdarjung hospitals carried bandages on their heads in a symbolic protest and suspended all non-emergency services. Some doctors also went around wards while wearing helmets.
Several resident doctors also held a protest at the Jantar Mantar.
In Odisha, students of the SCB Medical College and Hospital and the members of the Odisha Medical Services Association (OMSA) took out a protest march in Cuttack, while over 500 resident doctors, junior and interns of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Bhubaneswar started a day-long strike on Friday, though emergency services at the premier health institute remained unaffected.
15,000
About 15,000 doctors and nurses in private hospitals across Karnataka on Friday joined the nationwide strike, and so did doctors in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
In Kerala, over 3,000 post-graduate medical students and house surgeons across state-run medical college and hospitals on Friday went on a token strike.
However, the doctors clarified that the strike had got nothing to do with the nationwide day-long strike by medicos to express solidarity with their Kolkata counterparts, and their agitation was to demanding an increase in their stipends - last revised in 2015.