Bhubaneswar: As a mark of solidarity towards their protesting colleagues in West Bengal, junior doctors in Odisha Friday staged dharna with bandages on their foreheads, besides staying away from duty.
Members of the Resident Doctors Association (RDA), AIIMS, Bhubaneswar went on a ceasework protesting the attack on two junior doctors in the neighbouring state.
“There is a complete breakdown of law and order with report of mob attacking doctors in West Bengal. The local government had failed to provide protection and justice to doctors,” said Sourav Nanda, a doctor who participated in the protest.
He added, “In a democratic socialist structure, doctors do their duties in the interest of the state, but getting them to do it at gunpoint, threatening them, making them believe that the risk to your life is a non-negotiable occupational hazard is contradictory to work ethics”.
Above 250 junior doctors sat on dharna with bandages on their foreheads and did not join duty, including the outpatient department (OPD).
“The ceasework by the resident doctors has affected the health service at AIIMS here. The strike is for one day as a mark of solidarity towards the agitating doctors in West Bengal,” a senior doctor at the AIIMS said.
The Residents’ Doctor Association, AIIMS, Bhubaneswar said in a press release, that it was disheartened and saddened at the grievous crime against the medical fraternity of West Bengal.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has directed the members of all its state branches to stage protests and wear black badges, Friday. In a communique to all its state presidents and secretaries, the IMA has asked them to organise demonstrations in front of the district collectors’ offices from 10 am to noon, Friday and hand over a memorandum addressed to the prime minister to the collectors in every district. The junior doctors have been agitating in West Bengal since Tuesday demanding security for themselves in government hospitals, after two of their colleagues were attacked and seriously injured allegedly by relatives of a patient who died at the state-run NRS Medical College and Hospital.
Odisha Medical Services Association (OMSA) and doctors of the SCB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack Thursday had also protested the incident in West Bengal.
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