Agitating junior doctors, including postgraduate trainee (PGT) doctors, house staff, interns and medical students stuck to their stand of continuing with their cease-work as their meeting with the health department officials held at R G Kar Medical College Hospital, on Saturday, remained unsolved.
On the other hand, later this evening, Narayan Swarup Nigam, principal secretary in charge of health department, also held a meeting with senior doctors belonging to the Indian Medical Association (Bengal chapter), and other platforms like Association of Health Service Doctors (AHSD), Service Doctors’ Forum (SDF) etc., affiliated to different political parties seeking their opinion on how to solve the ongoing crisis, which is disrupting healthcare services in state-run hospitals.
Prof (Dr) Aniruddha Neogi, officer-on-special-duty (OSD) and special secretary in health department, informed the Joint Platform of Doctors (JPD) and Junior Doctors’ Front (JDF) to attend the meeting to discuss issues on how to restore normal healthcare services in government medical colleges and hospitals across the state.
Prof (Dr) Kaustav Nayek, director of medical education (DME), Dr Debashis Halder, director of health services (DHS) and representatives of JPD and JDF were present in the meeting.
The senior officials of the health department met the representatives of both platforms and urged the agitating doctors to join work so that healthcare services can be normalized.
“We will continue to cease-work because today’s meeting was fruitless. First, we want justice for the heinous incident of rape and murder of a woman doctor. We also want to know about the mystery behind it. We will decide our future course of action in connection with the protest,” said Dr Aniket Mahato of JDF.
“We will hold a meeting with representatives of other government medical colleges tonight to discuss the protest plan,” he added.
Considering severe disruptions in healthcare services in government hospitals across the state for the past two weeks, the health department has been repeatedly urging the agitating junior doctors to join work as soon as possible.
The Supreme Court has also asked the junior doctors to withdraw their cease-work programme.
Most of the government teaching hospitals’ OPDs are virtually closed because of cease-work of junior doctors, the backbone of public healthcare facilities in the state.