New Delhi: Even as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on Thursday extended the tenures of their junior and senior Resident Doctors — in light of the impending third wave of Covid-19, resident doctors from across the Capital continued their protests against the delay in NEET-PG Counselling 2021 and the police brutality unleashed on protesting doctors here on December 27.
Significantly, on Thursday, resident doctors associated with the Maulana Azad Medical College and Associated Hospital issued a statement declaring that all resident doctors across departments in LNJP, GB Pant, MAMC and Guru Nanak Eye Centre will withdraw all services (essential and non-essential) from today (December 31) untill the Delhi Police apologises for the brutality against doctors and withdraws the cases filed against them.
The RDA statement further went on to say that in addition to filing individual FIRs against doctors who were protesting on Monday, the police were purportedly also individually sending Covid-19 challan notices to the doctors. In fact, it added that the doctors will be forced to intensify their stir if they are forced to come to duty and threatened with action for protesting.
But even as this statement came in, the RDA at the Northern Railway Central Hospital said that many of their interns and resident doctors were already being threatened with penal action for taking part in the protests. In the statement signed by RDA president Dr Sonal Kumar Jha, the doctors said that their residents and interns were told to abandon the strike and that if they did not do so, they would not be issued completion certificates and would be blacklisted.
Strongly condemning the threats, the RDA said that in light of the police brutality on Monday, the doctors had expected "basic human consideration from our faculties which seems to be not being fulfilled".
Meanwhile, doctors at Ganga Ram Hospital here, a private facility in Delhi, took a protest march on Thursday to show solidarity with the protesting doctors and to protest the police action against their colleagues.
While the protest in Delhi has been led by doctors of three Centre-run facilities — Safdarjung, RML and Lady Hardinge hospitals, now more than 10 hospitals have joined the strike — seriously affecting patient care in the Capital. Among the other hospitals that have joined the protest include Hindu Rao and Kasturba Gandhi hospitals of the North MCD and the Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya as well.