Junior doctors in many hospitals remained off the job on Sunday demanding swift justice for a colleague who was raped and murdered, despite the end of a 24-hour strike called by theassociation of doctors.
Doctors across the country have held protests, candlelight marches and have refused to see non-emergency patients in the past week after the killing of the 31-year old postgraduate student of chest medicine around the early hours of Aug. 9 in Kolkata.
The Indian Medical Association, whose strike ended at 6 a.m. on Sunday, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that as 60% of India’s doctors are women, he needed to intervene to ensure hospital staff were protected by security protocols akin to those at airports.
“All healthcare professionals deserve peaceful ambience, safety and security at workplace,” it wrote in a letter to PM Modi.
‘COULD STOP EMERGENCY SERVICES’
The government has urged doctors to return to duty to treat rising cases of dengue and malaria while it sets up a committee to suggest measures to improve protection for healthcare professionals.
Most doctors resumed their usual activities, IMA officials said, although Sunday is generally a holiday for non-emergency cases.
“The doctors are back to their routine,” said Dr. Madan Mohan Paliwal, the IMA head in Uttar Pradesh. “The next course of action will be decided if the government does not take any strict steps to protect doctors… and this time we could stop emergency services too.”
But the All India Residents and Junior Doctors’ Joint Action Forum said on Saturday it would continue a “nationwide cease-work” with a 72-hour deadline for authorities to conduct a thorough inquiry and make arrests.
Dr. Prabhas Ranjan Tripathy, additional medical superintendent of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in the eastern city of Bhubaneswar, said junior doctors and interns had not resumed duty.
R.G. Kar hospital has been rocked by agitation and rallies for more than a week. Police banned the assembly of five or more people to protest around the hospital for a week from Sunday and deployed police in riot gear.
Blocking meetings, demonstrations and processions was justified to prevent “breach of peace, disturbances of the public tranquillity”, Kolkata Police Commissioner Vineet Goyal said in an order.
(Reuters)
