By IANS
Hyderabad : Medical services in all major government-run hospitals in Andhra Pradesh were paralysed Saturday as the doctors’ strike – protesting attacks on their colleagues – spread to different parts of the state.
About 5,000 junior doctors or postgraduate students in 10 teaching hospitals, attached to government-run medical colleges, boycotted their duties demanding immediate steps to protect them even as another attack on a doctor took place here Saturday.
Angry over alleged negligence by the doctors, a patient attacked a doctor at ESI Hospital. The doctor received head injuries.
The strike, the second this month, has caused severe inconvenience to patients. With senior doctors also staging protests and contemplating to join the strike, the situation may become worse.
Medical services were badly hit at major hospitals in the state including MGM Hospital, Warangal and King George Hospital, Visakhapatnam.
In Kurnool, a person who was injured in a road accident, died when he could not get treatment at a government hospital.
At the Niloufer Children’s Hospital here – where 40 children died during the 11-day strike by junior doctors earlier – two more children died early Saturday. The hospital authorities, however, claimed that the deaths were “routine”.
Junior Doctors’ Association, Indian Medical Association and Government Doctors’ Association are holding a joint meeting to decide the future course of action.
On Friday, relatives of Zakira Begum, an under trial, had roughed up junior doctors of the Government Maternity Hospital, Nayapul, here after her death.
While doctors said the 21-year-old woman died when they were trying to remove the dead foetus she was carrying, the relatives alleged she died due to negligence.
Soon after the attack, the junior doctors at the biggest maternity hospital in the state boycotted their duties. They alleged that Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) legislator Ahmed Pasha Khadri instigated the relatives of the woman.
The state government has already ordered a probe into the incident but the doctors are demanding tougher measures against the legislator and others involved in the attacks.
On Wednesday, junior doctors had called off their 11-day-old strike after the high court threatened to take penal action against them.
The junior doctors had launched the strike Dec 2 when MIM legislator Afsar Khan and his supporters attacked them at Niloufer Hospital over alleged negligence in the treatment of a child.
They demanded an attempt to murder case against Khan, his arrest and disqualification from assembly. While the government rejected the demands, a lower court directed police to book the legislator and 29 others for attempt to murder.