New Delhi: Healthcare services at private and government hospitals were badly hit in several States, including Delhi, Maharashtra, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh, as thousands of doctors went on strike for a day to express solidarity with their protesting colleagues who were attacked by a mob in Kolkata.
According to reports, hundreds of doctors in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur Thiruvananthapuram, Raipur, Patna and Punjab and other cities staged protests.
Doctors at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) were seen wearing helmets and bandages as they attended to patients. Hundreds of patients in the national capital faced difficulties as Resident Doctors Association (RDA) of AIIMS supported the day-long strike over violence against doctors in West Bengal.
The Bengal doctors have been on a strike since Tuesday after two junior doctors were assaulted at a government-run hospital in Kolkata by the relatives of a patient who died.
The protesting doctors defied West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s ultimatum, saying they won’t get back to work until they get better security.
Mamata Banerjee has accused the BJP and the CPM of engineering the strike and playing ‘Hindu-Muslim politics’.
Around 4,500 Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) stopped attending to patients in all the 26 government hospitals in the state simultaneously today.
MARD General Secretary Deepak Mundhe told IANS the doctors will keep off all routine duties between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. and the hospital administration has been informed to ensure all other services are not hampered or patients inconvenienced.
A large number of doctors gathered outside the KEM Hospital with banners, posters to express solidarity with the doctors who were assaulted in Kolkata on Tuesday following the death of a patient in a state-run hospital.
Similar protests were also being held in Pune, Aurangabad and Nagpur by MARD members who are demanding adequate protection for their counterparts in West Bengal.