Keep doctors safe!: Activists and medical professionals shouting slogans and holding posters during a protest to condemn the rape and murder of a young medic in Kolkata. — AFP
Hospital services were disrupted in several Indian cities after the nationwide spread of a doctors’ protest against the alleged rape and murder of a 31-year-old doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata, authorities and media said.
Television images showed thousands of doctors marching on Monday to protest the incident at a government-run hospital, calling for justice for the victim and better security measures, paralysing health services in West Bengal state.
The doctor’s body was found last Friday with multiple injuries and signs of sexual assault in a seminar hall at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in the city of Kolkata, local police said. One suspect has been arrested so far.
The protest rippled nationwide yesterday, joined by more than 8,000 government doctors in the western Maharashtra state, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, halting work in all hospital departments except emergency services, media said.
In the capital, New Delhi, junior doctors wearing white coats held posters that read, “Doctors are not punching bags,” as they sat in protest outside a large government hospital to demand an investigation, Reuters Television images showed.
Thousands of patients were left stranded by similar protests in cities such as Lucknow, capital of the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, and in the western tourist resort state of Goa that crimped some hospital services, media said.
“Pedestrian working conditions, inhuman workloads and violence in the workplace are the reality,” the Indian Medical Association, the biggest grouping of doctors in the country, told Health Minister JP Nadda in a letter.
A health ministry spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Doctors maintain their workplace environment is unsafe, even after the weekend arrest of a police volunteer in Kolkata for the doctor’s murder, and the resignation of the principal of the medical college where it happened.
City police chief Vineet Kumar Goyal told reporters a case had been registered against the suspect under provisions of the law relating to rape and murder.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told reporters she had given state police a deadline of Sunday to complete their investigation, or she would hand it to federal agencies.
Emergency services stayed suspended yesterday in almost all the government-run medical college hospitals in Kolkata, said state official NS Nigam, adding that the government was assessing the impact on health services.
Doctors in India’s crowded and often squalid government hospitals, who find themselves overworked and underpaid, sometimes also end up bearing the brunt of violence by those angered at medical services they see as falling short. — Agencies
