“Our baby was operated upon a few weeks ago here and has stitches. The doctors asked me to visit the outpatient department to get the stitches removed. I have been here since morning, and today everything is shut here,” said Mollah. “I have been told nothing can be done and I should go to a local doctor. So, I am returning. Let’s see where I can go with my baby,” he said.
Mollah is not the only one. Thousands of patients at state-run medical hospitals across West Bengal had a harrowing time on Monday as doctors scaled up protests and cease work, including boycotting emergency department cases, following the rape and murder of the 31-year-old woman junior doctor.
The doctors’ protest has thrown the state’s healthcare system into chaos, leaving patients at the mercy of the escalating crisis. On average, state-run hospitals, which are also referral centres, cater to nearly 2,500 patients every day in OPDs and over 1,000 patients in emergencies.
In front of the trauma care centre at R G Kar Medical College, 60-year-old Sudhir Biswas lay on a trolley. A resident of Rajchandrapur in Howrah, Biswas suffered a stroke at his home and was taken to a local nursing home which referred him to R G Kar Medical College and Hospital.
“We have been going from the emergency to the trauma care centre for one-and-a-half hours. Now, they are saying there are no doctors at work and we need to take the patient somewhere else. He is gasping. You can see that. What will we do?” asked Baby Sadhukhan, Biswas’s sister-in-law.
Aslam Mollah, a resident of Gocharan near New Town who came with his father Alambari Mollah after he complained of chest pain also had to return. “All the OPDs are closed. What will I do? My father is 65 years old. He has severe chest pain. Local doctors said to immediately take him to a medical college hospital which has good doctors and facilities. But no one working here. I don’t know what I will do,” said Aslam.
At Sagore Dutta Medical College and Hospital, Nazima Khatoon, 78, was screaming in pain when the gatekeeper asked her relative to wait until he could confirm if a doctor was available. “He came back to inform us that there was only one doctor at the emergency and suggested she go to another hospital,” said her relative.
“I am not in a condition to go anywhere after. I knew that the situation at R G Kar isn’t good but we expected I would get a doctor here,” said Khatoon of Ghola in Sodepur.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the security personnel at the emergency department’s gate said, “We have been told to only allow extremely critical patients inside. There is only one doctor on the ground floor. No doctor is available on other floors. Even if someone is admitted, they are not being attended. OPD is shut,” he said.
“We are doctors. We have no problem in giving treatment but this cause is much bigger. We will continue to fight for justice,” said a senior doctor with the hospital’s gynaecology department.
On Monday evening, the doctors’ protests over the rape and murder of the doctor intensified after the principal of R G Kar Medical College and Hospital was deputed to another institution in the city following his resignation earlier in the day.
The protesting doctors have demanded a “fast-track judicial inquiry” into the rape-murder as well as the removal of the principal, medical superintendent, dean, and head of department (HoD) of Pulmonary Medicine of R G Kar Medical College, and the additional commissioner of police under whose jurisdiction the local police post falls. Besides the principal, Medical Superintendent Dr Sanjay Vashisth was removed from the post.
They have also demanded compensation to the victim’s family.
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