Braving heavy rains, Jr doctors continue protest

Hyderabad: The junior doctors continued their protest on the seventh day, boycotting the outpatient services in protest of the rape and murder of a medico student in RG Kar Medical College in Kolkata.

Braving heavy rains, the JUDAs of Osmania, Gandhi, ESIC and NIMS hospitals protested at the giant statue of Dr BR Ambedkar behind the Secretariat on Tuesday. The doctors raised slogans like ‘We want justice’ and sought stringent punishment to the rapist.

Doctors have been demanding stringent laws like the Central Protection Act for safeguarding the lives of healthcare professionals. The Telangana Government Teaching Doctors Association (TGTDA) General Secretary Dr Kiran Madala said that the conviction rate under violence against health care personnel in India was just under 0.3 per cent and the conviction rate under violence against women was under 2 per cent. The conviction rate under violence against health care personnel and women in India are the lowest among all the other cases. The arrest rate against violence of health care personnel in Maharashtra is once in every day, he said.

Explaining why an Act like CPA was necessary for the healthcare professionals, a senior surgeon Dr Praveen Tripathi said that doctors form one of the very few professions where dealing with public is a daily thing. Every doctor probably meets 50 to 150 people every day. There are many professions where they deal with people but doctors deal with people in vulnerable state of mind and when they are in distress. “They tend to think that if the doctors try hard their family members can be saved but the doctors are no gods, they cannot save everyone. When people are emotionally disturbed, everybody wants to say doctors did not do their job properly. There are no police personnel in the hospitals and there will be hundreds of patients and their attendants. That is why doctors feel so vulnerable at times,” he said.

Dr Praveen added that nobody touches police officers, judges because they know the consequences would be very bad. “This is why the Central Protection Act is the need of the hour. It is not only about doctors. The more violence, the more defensive the practice becomes,” he said.