Jharkhand doctors express solidarity with West Bengal counterparts

RANCHI/BOKARO: Around 700 students and junior doctors of three medical colleges along with doctors at various private healthcare facilities lent their support to their counterparts in West Bengal, who are on strike against violence faced by them.
From organising street plays, to wearing helmets with placards in hand and raising slogans against West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, the doctors and students from across the state protested against the violence inflicted upon their counterparts at a state-run medical college in West Bengal.The agitators demanded a healthy and secure work environment from the government.
Several undergraduate students, who participated in plays, highlighted the importance of doctors and their importance in serving the society. “On several occasions we receive patients who had undertaken medication from quacks for months and approach us at the end. It becomes very difficult to save such patients and then it becomes a reason for patient’s kin to thrash us. We are only trying to send a message that we are doctors we aren’t gods. Please don’t punish us for saving a life as it happened at NRS Kolkata,” said Smita Mishra, a third year MBBS student of RIMS Ranchi.
Medicos from Jamshedpur’s Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College and Hospital and Dhanbad’s Pataliputra Medical College and Hospital also held demonstrations on their respective campuses.
Around 6,000 patients were affected as outpatient departments, indoor services and elective operation theatres were shut across the state bringing health services to a standstill as doctors protested demanding security.
Apart from government doctors, medicos at private hospitals too wore black badges on their arms and attended to patients in support of the protests. A candle march was taken out in the evening by doctors from the city at RIMS campus were medical professionals participated under the aegis of Indian Medical Association (IMA), Jharkhand chapter.
General secretary of state IMA, Pradeep Kumar Singh said: “We have been demanding protection which is not only beneficial for doctors but also safeguards patients’ rights, for past two years, but it is still stuck in the state legislative assembly. How can doctors feel secure if state government keeps on failing us?”
The protest saw maximum participation from junior doctors across the state and their main concern was they are always at the receiving end as they are the primary contact with the patients and their relatives. The doctors at Bokaro General Hospital who also participated in the protest spoke to TOI and raised their issues.
“We look after patients round the clock as senior doctors only pay visits, but we get thrashed by patients’ kin as it happened with the intern in the West Bengal hospital. Doctors are feeling threatened and that is affecting their morale in serving people,” said Shweta, a junior doctor, at BGH.