By IANS
Patna : The Bihar government has decided to put health facilities under the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) in a bid to end the ongoing strike by paramedics, which entered its sixth day Thursday.
About half-a-dozen patients are estimated to have died in the strike that has crippled services in government-run hospitals across the state.
The strike by class three and four employees, including technicians and clerks, began Friday.
“The government will not allow deterioration of health services in the name of protests… the services would be brought under ESMA,” Bihar Health Minister Chandra Mohan Rai told IANS Thursday.
“My department has already directed all district magistrates and civil surgeons to take all possible measures to deal with the ongoing strike by health workers,” Rai said.
Health has already been included under the ESMA ambit in most states.
The indefinite strike has crippled the functioning of government-run hospitals, referral health centres and primary health centres across the state.
Medical services in the Patna Medical College and Hospital, Nalanda Medical College and Hospital and Darbhanga Medical College and Hospital have been affected.
“The strike has badly affected the functioning of health centres, particularly in rural areas,” a senior official in the health department said.
Health workers went on strike last Friday to protest police action against their colleagues, including trained midwives and members of Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) mostly engaged in rural areas. They were then protesting non-payment of salaries and other benefits and had blocked the Dak Bungalow Square, the busiest crossing in Patna.
The police used batons, water cannon and teargas shells to disperse them, injuring dozens of them.
In added trouble for patients in the state, over 3,000 government doctors working in hospitals and public health centres across the state had threatened to go on strike from Wednesday to protest the state government’s failure to raise their pay scales and career promotion schemes.
However, the Patna High Court Tuesday intervened to stop the doctors from going on strike “in the interest of patients”, after the court heard two public suits.