Junior doctors at the College of Medicine and Sagore Dutta Hospital in Kamarhati began a complete cease-work from Friday night after some of them were allegedly assaulted inside a hospital ward following the death of a woman.
The junior doctors said they were appalled at how more than 15 people, purportedly relatives and acquaintances of the deceased, could enter the female medicine ward without facing any resistance from police or other security personnel on duty.
The family of the woman, Ranjana Shaw, 36, alleged she died because there was no one to treat her. When she started gasping for breath, a nurse arrived but it was too late, they said.
A senior official of the state health department said no senior doctor had come to examine the woman and she was attended to only by junior doctors.
“When we brought my daughter to the hospital, they asked us to get an X-ray and ECG done. When we came back after doing the ECG, they said the doctor will come at 6 and examine her. I said my daughter’s condition was worsening, her hands were turning cold. I requested them to treat her,” Ranjana’s mother told a TV news channel.
“When my daughter was gasping for breath, a nurse came. The doctors did not do any treatment, they did not give her any medicine,” she alleged.
Junior doctors across medical colleges in Bengal were on a 42-day cease-work from August 9 and resumed partial duties only from September 21.
“We will not join work till safety measures are implemented,” said a junior doctor of Sagore Dutta.
Many of them sat on a makeshift protest dais in the hospital and chanted slogans.
“The woman was brought to the hospital on Friday afternoon. Her vitals were already not good and she was critical. She had a fever and loose motion for five days. She was alert but drowsy,” said Monojit Mukherjee, a postgraduate trainee in chest medicine.
“She needed to be shifted to critical care but since there was no bed available in the critical care unit, she was in the emergency. She passed away a few hours after her arrival,” he said.
It was then that her family and acquaintances started to abuse, heckle and finally assault the doctors and nurses on duty, he said.
“About 15 to 20 people barged into the female medicine ward. They went into the duty rooms. If there was adequate security and if the security persons and the police worked properly, the mob should have been stopped at any of the multiple checkpoints that they crossed to enter the ward. This is a glaring gap in the security arrangements,” he said.
On Saturday afternoon, health secretary Narayan Swaroop Nigam, Barrackpore police commissioner Alok Rajoria and other officials of the state health department visited Sagore Dutta hospital and met the authorities and the protesting junior doctors.
“The junior doctors wanted to know how this could happen. We have already started installing CCTVs across the campus and the work will be done in a week. We have started making duty rooms for doctors,” said a senior official of the state health department.
“It was also discussed in the meeting that whenever a critical patient arrives, a faculty member, who is a senior doctor, must attend to the patient and not leave everything to juniors,” said the official.
While leaving the hospital, Rajoria said four persons were arrested in connection with Friday’s incident. “We have arrested four persons. We are also scanning CCTV footage and whoever else was involved will also be arrested,” he said.
“Hospital security is a collective responsibility of the police, hospital administration and the private security agencies. There is an issue about access control in an emergency, how many people can enter. We will implement what was discussed at the meeting,” he said.
