Doctor strike: The junior doctors’ strike in West Bengal, on since Tuesday, has hit services in the state’s government-run hospitals. The resident doctors’ association of AIIMS urged doctors’ bodies across the country to join the token strike.
Doctors across the country will boycott work on Monday to express solidarity with their Bengal counterparts whose strike to protest the attack on an intern at a government-run hospital in Kolkata entered its fourth day. Junior doctors in Delhi, Mumbai and other cities have boycotted work today affecting medical services. Blaming the Mamata Banerjee government for the doctors’ strike in Bengal, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan appealed to her to “not make it a prestige issue”. He also assured doctors across the country that the government is “committed to ensuring their safety”.
“Instead of taking action against the attackers, she (Mamata Banerjee) gave the doctors an ultimatum, warned and threatened them because of which doctors of West Bengal and across the country are angry,” Minister Harsh Vardhan said. “If one chief minister shows sensitivity and changes her behaviour, it will end the suffering of patients across the country,” he added.
