Bengal junior doctors resume essential services, hold simultaneous protests

The junior doctors in West Bengal, who have been on a strike since August 9 over the brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata last month, partially lifted the cease work while joining essential services in various State-run hospitals on Saturday.

“We resumed essential services in various departments from 8 am today. All these days, only the senior doctors were handling the essential services. Now we have started helping them,” said Debdutta Bhadra, a junior doctor in RG Kar Hospital.

The decision to partially end the cease work came on Thursday evening marking a major breakthrough in the 41-day impasse after the state government issued a set of 10 directives to ensure safety, security and efficient functioning of the state health care system.

“We have resumed essential services. The senior doctors are handling the OPD. But protests by junior doctors will continue till we get justice and our demands are met. We have only got assurance till now from the government. As a goodwill gesture we have partially lifted our cease work,” said a junior doctor at Bankura Sammilani Medical College.

A few thousand junior doctors resumed the essential services in various departments such as trauma, orthopaedics, paediatric emergency, gynaecology, surgery and medicine among others.

“We haven’t joined non-essential services and OPD though. We are all waiting for the Supreme Court’s next hearing on the RG Kar case scheduled on September 27. We have also sent a deadline for the government to implement the directives by then. If no steps are taken by the state administration, we may again start a full-fledged cease work,” said Aniket Mahata, one of the protesting and a popular face of the more than a month-long doctor’s agitation.

With at least 10 districts in south Bengal hit by flood since September 15 triggered by heavy rains and release of water from dams, the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front which spearheaded the agitation also started sending team to flood-hit regions. They launched “Abhaya Clinics” in flood-hit areas to give medical support to the victims.

A 10-member joint team of junior doctors from RG Kar Medical College and Hospital and Midnapore Medical College and Hospital was sent to Keshpur in West Midnapore on Saturday to provide medical support to flood-hit victims. On Sunday another team would send a team to Panskura.

“Our protest would continue simultaneously. The stage and make-shift shelter at the protest site just inside the main gate of RG Kar Hospital is not being dismantled. Junior doctors Demonstration will continue. We are preparing rosters for our essential services duties and also to attend the Abhaya Clinics in flood hit regions. At the same time junior doctors will continue the protest in a relay system and demonstration will continue at the protest site,” said Mahata.

The striking medics had earlier said that they would install a statute of Abhaya in RG Kar Hospital. Abhaya is the name given to the victim.

Meanwhile protests by citizens continued in Kolkata and its outskirts demanding justice for the RG Kar victim. Rallies were held in Shyambazar, Jadavpur, College Sqaure and Behala among others.

On Friday the junior doctors ended their sit-in out side Swasthya Bhavan, headquarters of the state health department. They held a rally to CGO Complex where the CBI’s office in Kolkata in located to mount pressure on the federal agency which is probing into the RG Kar rape and murder case.

Soon after the sit-in ended, laborers could be seen engaged in erasing and trying to cover the wall and road graffiti with fresh coat of paint. The graffiti were drawn by junior doctors demanding justice for the victim during their sit-in.

“They can erase the graffiti on the wall and road. But they wont be able to erase it from the heart of citizens,” said Kinjal Nanda, a junior doctor.