Doctors’ strike enters Day 2

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 15 

Doctors’ strike in Delhi hospitals continued on the second consecutive day today in solidarity with their colleagues in Kolkata.

Patients faced hardships as doctors refused to attend to them in OPDs in all government hospitals. Those who had come from outside Delhi were either going back or staying near hospitals.

Doctors at the Centre-run Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital, and RML Hospital and those running Delhi government’s healthcare facilities such as GTB Hospital, Dr Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital, Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital and DDU Hospital boycotted work and held protests. However, emergency and ICU services were not hampered in these hospitals.

Meanwhile, resident doctors of AIIMS and Safdarjung Hospital, who resumed work after having boycotted it on Friday, gave a 48-hour ultimatum to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to meet the demands of the state’s agitating doctors, failing which they would go on an indefinite strike.

Patients bore the brunt of the protest as they faced a lot of inconvenience  at hospital OPDs. 

A 28-year-old pregnant woman who visited Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital for follow-up claimed that she could not find a doctor in the OPD. “My ultrasound is due. I always come here for check-up but today I could not find a doctor for consultation. Now I have to go somewhere else but I have learnt that protests are on at other hospitals too. We patients are facing lot of discomfort because of this strike,” she said.