By IANS,
Kathmandu : Associated with three prime ministers as well as the current president of Nepal, the republic’s largest India-aided project is battling growing security threats with 21 junior doctors resigning en masse in protest this week.
The B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences in eastern Nepal, which runs a 700-bed hospital as well as a medical college, is the fruit of the promise made by late Indian prime minister Chandra Shekhar.
At a public meeting in eastern Nepal’s Biratnagar town in 1991, the Indian leader promised that his government would assist Nepal to set up a medical college in the Terai plains.
In 1994, the memorandum of understanding was signed in Kathmandu by B. Shankaranand, then the Indian minister of health and family welfare, and Ram Baran Yadav, the then Nepali minister of state for health, who is now the president of Nepal.
India provided an initial assistance of Rs.800 million to set up the institute, named after Nepal’s first elected prime minister Bishweswar Prasad Koirala. New Delhi also sent doctors and teachers on deputation to provide the initial knowhow.
Currently, there are about 10 Indian doctors serving in the institute in Dharan town and nearly 50 Indian students from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi and Punjab doing their MD and MS courses.
“Even when there was a strike by nursing staff all over Nepal, our hospital did not close for a minute,” says B.P. Das, a doctor who is the director at the institute.
“But due to the security situation, it is increasingly becoming difficult for doctors and staff to work.”
Since the fall of King Gyanendra’s army-backed regime in 2006 and the start of a period of transition, law and order has been rapidly deteriorating in the former Himalayan kingdom with violent protests – often over trivial issues – becoming the new order.
The situation is even worse in the Terai plains where arms proliferate and the government presence is weak. Doctors have in recent times borne the brunt of attacks by patients’ relatives who allege medical negligence.
“We are overloaded with patients,” says Das. “For fear of attacks by patients’ relatives, all hospitals, nursing home and private practitioners in the periphery refer their serious cases to us. Daily, on an average, we have 3,000 outdoor patients and 200-300 emergency cases.
“In the emergency ward, there is not even space to put your foot. There are only about 400 doctors and it’s difficult coping with so many patients. But if there is even a 10 minute delay in attending a case, the patient’s relatives storm in, kick down tables and abuse doctors.”
Twenty-one junior doctors, signed on a one-year contract to serve in the emergency award, have resigned en masse, citing the feeling of insecurity after such a recent attack.
Other hospitals have also been complaining about the feeling of insecurity.
The Manipal College of Medical Sciences in Pokhara town, built as a joint venture between India’s Manipal Group and the government of Nepal, was forced to go on strike in the past after its staff were manhandled by patients’ relatives.