Doctors resume services after negotiations

Nalgonda : The protest by doctors of the Government General Hospital and the Medical College continued Friday for the second day echoing their demand of the immediate cancellation of the order given by the District Collector C Narayana Reddy earlier this week.

It may be mentioned here that there are widespread allegations of non-availability of doctors at the government general hospital, and that doctors who are supposed to be in OP are not available. In this regard, the Collector had appointed district officials to examine various aspects of the hospital.

In response, doctors openly stated that they would not accept other departments’ supervision and demanded cancelation of the order given by Collector staging a widespread protest and boycotting their services.

The Collector’s orders were to examine if the doctors were coming or leaving after Biometric attendance. Other aspects under scrutiny were lab test, sanitation, quality meals for patients, infrastructure, etc. Collector Reddy issued the order that the district authorities would investigate such matters as there was no trace of doctors in a few OPs.

On Friday, although there were junior and senior doctors in other departments, there was no doctor for the ENT, eye, skin, and ortho departments. Not only seniors, but juniors as well were not present in these departments and long queues of patients were seen leading to severe difficulties. Senior doctors, HODs, professors and assistant professors of all departments of the medical college and GGH participated in the protest and the patients had to suffer a lot.

As people suffering from various problems came for treatment, OP department staff wrote OP slips to them. All of them had to wait in line at the rooms of the respective OP departments from 9 am.

In the wake of doctors’ agitation, none of the senior doctors in the OPs of General Medicine and Dental Departments attended duty. However, junior doctors provided services in the respective departments. Since there was no one to tell whether at least junior doctors would be available or not, patients, especially the elderly faced severe problems.

Notably, senior doctors and junior doctors rendered services in the ICU, Maternal and Child Health Centre, and Emergency Services Department.

Later, the Doctors Association State Delegation (TTGDA) took part in the negotiation meeting with Additional Collector Purnachandra on Friday and reportedly agreed for necessary modifications as per the doctors’ request.

After much negotiations, the doctors called off their protest and took part in duties in the afternoon session as the negotiations were successful.