Medical fraternity backs Bengal docs
We are demanding an immediate end to the violence against doctors.
The strike is in response to a grave situation
R. V. Asokan, IMA official
300 Doctors of 4 medical colleges submitted mass resignations
NEW DELHI — Doctors, including kin of top Trinamool Congress leaders, held protests across the country on Friday in solidarity with their agitating colleagues in West Bengal even as Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and relatives of patients urged both sides to end the impasse which has crippled the state’s healthcare 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, over 300 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 on Friday stood by the agitating junior doctors at the NRS Medical College and Hospital.
Banerjee’s nephew Abesh Banerjee, who is a medical student, on Friday came out in support of the protesting doctors.
Abesh Banerjee, whose Facebook bio describes him as the President of KPC Medical College and Hospital, was seen at a rally.
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 Minister Harsh Vardhan appealed to both the agitating doctors to end their strike and Chief Minister 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 he would take all possible measures to ensure a safe environment for them at hospitals across the country. Expressing deep concern over the West Bengal incident, Harsh Vardhan said: “I strongly condemn the unruly behaviour and assault on doctors. I will discuss it with the Chief Minister of Bengal.”
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.
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 went on a token strike. However, they 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. —