Attacks On Doctors

According to "The Gaurdian" Approximately 800,000 doctors all across India went on strike on 17th June to demand better working conditions, following many years of complaints about violent attacks from patients’ families. Junior doctors are on strike all across Bengal, following a dangerous attack on two doctors at a government hospital, after the death of a patient.

This has become a regular pattern, with similar reports coming in from Agartala, Chennai, Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Jaipur and other places. An Indian Medical Association spokesman claims that 40% of medical practitioners in India have suffered assault in their lives. A brutal attack on a junior doctor in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, appears to have been the final straw. The attack led to all medical practitioners all across the country to come together and protest against this ill practice.

Paribaha Mukhopadhyay was walking down a corridor at NRS hospital with a colleague when a group of men attacked them. The doctor wasn't involved in treating Mohammed Sayeed, 75, at all, who died at the hospital on 10 June, but his mortified relatives attacked the first doctors they saw, turning the hospital into a battleground for sometime, according to witnesses of the assault. In a country where lynch mobs take the law into their hands with great apparent impunity, what can be done to protect doctors? While there is, indeed, a problem of generalized lawlessness in a great many places, let us also appreciate that we do not come across many instances of lawyers being assaulted for losing cases or policemen being thrashed for insipid investigations.

Mukhopadhyay suffered a fractured skull and needed a craniotomy.

“The events in Kolkata were just a flashpoint. This has gone on for too long. This violence against doctors is not acceptable in any civilised society,” said Dr Rajan Sharma, the president-elect of the Indian Medical Association (IMA). He also argued that doctors have a right to security as they are oridary citizens as well.

Doctors in Kolkata were further infuriated by the hostile response of the state chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, who ordered them to go back to work without addressing their grievances. The anger, however, has spread nationwide. It has become increasingly common for doctors to be jostled, roughed up or beaten by angry relatives of the recently deceased.

“We want the government to provide security in all hospitals and to amend the law so that anyone attacking a doctor is denied bail. We just want to do our work without fear,” said Dr Amarinder Malhi, president of the AIIMS resident doctors’ association.

The strike is not, however, expected to last long. Banerjee finally agreed to talk to doctors in Kolkata on Monday and the federal health minister, Harsh Vardhan, has been sounding sympathetic.