BENGAL PATIENTS BEAR THE BRUNT
KOLKATA — Amidst the protests, demands, ultimatums and apologies, a three-month-old child with spinal cord problem and other patients coming from various districts of West Bengal faced the brunt of the state-run hospitals doctors’ strike as the stalemate entered its fourth day on Friday. Pictures of patients lying on pavements near many city hospitals were indicators of the way the state’s health care services have been completely throttled due to the “cease work” by the junior doctors in state-run hospitals.
While the doctors fought pressing for their demands regarding security and infrastructure, the hapless family members kept doing the rounds of different hospitals hoping to get some treatment, and fervently urged the state administration for Aquick action to normalise the services.
Patient Bhagya Das’s husband has been knocking at the doors of Burdwan Medical College and Hospital since Wednesday for his wife’s dialysis. Many thalassemia patients of various age groups seemed helpless as the outpatient departments (OPDs) remained closed.
Another patient’s kin sympathised with the junior doctors’ plight but advised them not to be harsh. “Patient parties should never harm the doctors. But the doctors cannot make other patients suffer for somebody else’s mistake,” a woman in her thirties said.
On Thursday, a bereaved father was seen holding the body of his deceased infant outside Sagar Dutta Medical College in Kamarhati, in the suburbs of Kolkata, alleging that the child did not get any treatment. —