India’s largest medical association on Friday called for a “withdrawal of services” by all modern medical doctors for 24 hours starting Saturday 6am, expanding the nationwide protests by resident doctors in medical colleges into the private sector.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) which has joined the protests, triggered by the rape and murder of a junior doctor at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, has said there will be no out-patient department services and no elective (planned) surgeries during the 24 hours.

Emergency and casualty services will continue to function, the IMA said, while calling on all modern doctors “irrespective of the sector and place of work” to refrain from providing routine medical services. “We are hoping that doctors — wherever they are, whether in government or private sector, large or small clinics will respond to the call,” IMA national president R.V. Asokan told The Telegraph.

Resident doctors across the country have been protesting since the RG Kar murder, demanding new central legislation to curb violence against doctors and improved working conditions for postgraduate medical students and resident doctors.

The Union health ministry on Friday issued an office order asking all medical colleges and government hospitals across the country to file an “institutional first information report” within six hours of any violence against any healthcare worker on their premises. Doctors have said the order comes nowhere close to what they have
been demanding.

The IMA said in a statement on Friday that “at a policy level, the reluctance to acknowledge” the violence on doctors and other healthcare workers “has to change.”

The association released a set of demands that includes a central act that its executives say would help strengthen existing legislation relating to violence against healthcare workers in 25 states.

“The statewide legislation provides only substantive laws which are inadequate and toothless without procedural law in the form of the code of criminal procedure,” a member of the IMA said, explaining why central legislation
is essential.

The IMA has echoed concerns expressed by members of the Federation of the All India Medical Association, a body representing postgraduate doctors, about poor working conditions for resident doctors and postgraduate medical students.

The IMA, citing the 36-hour duty shift of the murdered doctor and the lack of safe spaces for rest, has included in its demands a “thorough overhaul of the working and living conditions of resident doctors.” The demands also include new security protocols in hospitals to make them as safe as airports.