In an effort to placate irate doctors across the country agitating over the issue of violence against their ilk, Union health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan on Friday met representatives from Delhi-based Resident Doctors Association of AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, United Resident & Doctors Association of India (URDA) and Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA), and assured them of his support to their cause. “I strongly condemn the unruly behavior and assault against doctors. I will discuss it with the chief minister of West Bengal,” Vardhan told them.
Vardhan also said that he had brought up the matter in his letter to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, urging her to “ensure an amicable end to the agitation and provide a secure working environment to the doctors”. A statement from the Union health ministry said that Vardhan has also assured doctors that he would discuss the matter of providing safety to hospitals with the home ministry, and would take up the matter with the chief ministers and health ministers of other states. Elsewhere, however, Vardhan has blamed Banerjee for failing to control the situation by threatening the doctors to resume work.
Doctors in West Bengal have been agitating since Tuesday after the brutal assault of two of their colleagues at the NRS Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata over alleged negligence.
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In turn, Banerjee asked them to resume work or vacate government hostels if they continued to be on strike. She also claimed that the situation had been escalated by the BJP, and the issue had been “communalised” by them to achieve their political ends.
The Indian Medical Association has declared that the doctors’ strike would continue on Saturday and Sunday as well. On Monday, the IMA has called for an all -India strike, where all non-essential services including OPDs will be withdrawn. The IMA has been demanding a national law to deal with violence against doctors, one that provides a minimum of seven years of imprisonment for hospital violence.
“The Kolkata incident of violence against doctors is not an isolated case. Such cases of attacks against doctors and nurses are common across India. The healthcare system in India is bedeviled by paucity of resources. Limited number of doctors, nurses and medical staff has to cater to a large volume of patients. In public hospitals, particularly, overcrowding and long queues are a major problem. A majority of such episodes are reported from emergency and casualty wards where doctors are constantly struggling to save multiple lives. Increasing resources so that more doctors and nurses are available, creating more hospitals and medical colleges, instituting mechanisms for triage in public hospitals as well as providing adequate security personnel in hospital premises are important to deal with the situation,” said Dr Dharmender Nagar, MD, Paras Healthcare. His hospital, however, did not participate in the strike.
Dr H.S. Chhabra, medical director and orthopaedic surgeon at Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, said that counsellors should be provided to deal with patients and their families before a critical procedure.
