Chief minister Mamata Banerjee pays tribute to Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, on whose birthday Doctors’ Day is celebrated, at SSKM Hospital on Monday. Picture by Gautam Bose
Doctors in Bengal work under immense stress and patients are disappointed if they do not get the care they expect, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said on Monday while urging all to show “love” at hospital.
“Thousands of people come to a hospital, only one incident happens but even that one incident leaves a deep scar,” she said.
“We have to make people understand that one doctor has to treat over thousand patients. I know the situation in outdoor (units). Lakhs of people go there. At the same time if a patient doesn’t get proper treatment, his face turns pale (mukh shukiye jai).”
The chief minister admitted there was a dearth of doctors in Bengal, a reason for flare-ups at government hospitals. “We are 4,000 doctors short. We wanted to hire 10,000 doctors but got only 6,000,” she said.
Mamata was addressing some of Bengal’s most prominent doctors at a programme to mark Doctors’ Day at SSKM Hospital.
Missing from the audience were junior doctors who shoulder the bulk of the workload in the emergency wards and OPDs at government hospitals and bear the brunt of the fury of patients’ relatives.
At the NRS Medical College and Hospital, two interns were injured after being allegedly assaulted by relatives and acquaintances of a patient who died there. The assault led to a seven-day strike by junior doctors at medical colleges across Bengal.
The last time Mamata had entered SSKM Hospital, when the ceasework was on, she was booed by protesting doctors.
On Monday, Mamata said of doctors in Bengal: “Had you not been there, many lives would have been snuffed out early.” The government, she added, will felicitate junior doctors, nurses and Group D employees, too, from next year.
At Monday’s programme, around 30 senior doctors were felicitated with the Bishishto Chikitsak Samman. Seven got the lifetime achievement award. The first carries a cash reward of Rs 1 lakh and the second, Rs 2 lakh.
The chief minister spelt out a plan to appoint local people to deal with accident victims. “We are trying to identify some black spots (accident-prone areas). We will hire a chaiwala or panwala in each such place. He will alert police and ambulance and arrange for quick transportation of the patient to hospital,” she said.
The chief minister repeated what she had said before: when a patient dies, the relatives’ ire is directed at whoever is in front. For the same reason, she said, people attack police or set on fire police vehicles after an accident.
This was the second time in a week that Mamata sought to send across the message that conflicts could be resolved through love.
While speaking in the Assembly on Friday, she stressed the importance of “human touch” and “love” while referring to how she resolved the impasse involving junior doctors.
‘Gesture of friendship’
Many of the doctors the chief minister felicitated on Monday were from private hospitals.
The move comes two years after the state government — in response to complaints of medical negligence and other malpractices — threatened to take stern action against private hospitals and their doctors.
The government enacted the West Bengal Clinical Establishments Act (Registration, Regulation and Transparency) Act in 2017 and set up a commission under it to investigate complaints against private hospitals and order penalties. The absence of such a panel for government hospitals prompted doctors of private hospitals to allege discrimination.
Health department officials said the chief minister sought to appear friendly to private hospitals by felicitating doctors working there.
Trauma care centre
Mamata inaugurated a 244-bed trauma care centre at SSKM on Monday (see page 13).
More seats
Mamata asked the medical education director, Pradip Mitra, to ensure the number of seats at medical colleges and nursing colleges were increased.
