Ten die in AP govt hospitals
Junior doctors’ strike continues, emergency services boycotted
At least ten patients have died since Friday night at different government–run hospitals in Andhra Pradesh as the 18-day old agitation by junior doctors took an ugly turn.
Following the adamant attitude of the government in addressing their demands and the stern warnings to give up the agitation after the failure of the first round of talks, the 3000-strong Junior doctors even boycotted emergency services in the ten teaching–cum–general hospitals in the state .
The government claimed that the junior doctors’ agitation was the reason that emergency Medicare in the state was down, affecting 52,000 patients and nearly 15,000 operations, including 1,500 major surgeries, all over the state.
Emergency services in the casualty department were crippled all over the state following a total boycott by the junior doctors who had until recently abstained from regular duties but attended to trauma centres in hospitals on humanitarian grounds.
A government spokesman said six patients had died in the emergency ward of Gandhi Hospital in Hyderabad, while one patient each in Visakhapatnam and Kurnool had died on Friday night. The kith and kin of the deceased blamed it on the doctors’ strike and the absence of timely medicare .
The agitating doctors chose to abstain from trauma centres in the hospitals following State Health Education Minister K Murali Mohan’s outright rejection of their demands and direction to end the strike. Prominent among their demands was a 40 per cent hike in their stipend as well as slashes in the mandatory rural service from three to one year.
The junior doctors’ strike has crippled trauma services in all the major super speciality hospital in the district and premier hospitals like Osmania and Gandhi Hospitals, services in the state capital, the casualty wards and intensive care units of various departments at the government hospitals in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur, Kakinada, Tirupati, Anantapur, Kurnool and Warangal.
The authorities are using the services of non–clinical para–medical staff and doctors from PHC in rural areas to tide over the situation but the huge burden of patients has made it inadequate. Nearly 52,000 patients in all the hospitals in Hyderabad and in the districts have been affected by the strike.
“Nearly 1,500 major operations and another 13,500 other operations were put off indefinitely for the last one week as the specialist doctors were drawn to work in the trauma centres,” said the State Minister K Murali Mohan .
Meanwhile, Finance Minister Anam Rammohan Reddy appealed to the striking junior doctors to give up agitation as their actions have mostly affected the poor among the patients.
