In protest of the attack on junior doctors in West Bengal, the Jharkhand chapter of Indian Medical Association (IMA) has decided to ensure a no-work-Monday for doctors across the State. Not only will the Government and private hospitals be affected due to the protest, but also diagnostic centres and private clinics will remain closed on Monday, officials from IMA said.
“The Deputy Commissioners and Civil Surgeons of all the 24 districts have already been informed. Even diagnostic centres and private clinics have agreed to remain closed for a day as a mark of protest against attacks on medical professionals across the country,” said Dr. Pradeep Kumar Singh, General Secretary of IMA’s Jharkhand chapter.
Junior doctors in West Bengal are on strike since last Tuesday in protest of an attack on two of their colleagues at NRS Medical College and Hospital Kolkata. The protest has snowballed into a nationwide movement of doctors affecting work at hospitals in New Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Patna and several other cities. In Jharkhand, junior doctors from all the government hospitals went on a daylong strike on Friday, which affected the functioning of the Outdoor Patient Department (OPD).
While doctors will remain off duty on Monday, emergency services will run across the State in order to address any exigency. Jharkhand, doctors said, has witnessed several incidents of attacks by attendants on medicos in the recent past. The Medical Protection Act (MPA) is yet to be implemented here and doctors have been pressing for its implementation since years.
In February last year, a doctor was heckled by attendants of a patient at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) prompting medicos at the hospital to go on an indefinite strike. A couple of months later, in June, a nurse was thrashed by attendants of a patient who died in the hospital.
This incident too caused uproar by RIMS staff. Similar incidents were also reported in Patliputra Medical College Hospital (PMCH) in Dhanbad and Mahatma Gandhi Medical College Hospital (MGMCH) in Jamshedpur.
Implementation of MPA has been a long pending demand of the Jharkhand chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA). The Act has already been implemented in 18 states in India and IMA wants Jharkhand to be the 19th state to implement the MPA. “The Cabinet had approved the MPA in Jharkhand in 2017. Later, a select committee too gave a report on it.