Health care crisis in Maharashtra: Despite MARD’s appeal, resident doctors’ strike continues for 5th day

Poor patients continued to be deprived of affordable but overburdened health care at government hospitals across Maharashtra as junior doctors did not resume their work today, despite Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors’ (MARD) call to end the five-day strike.

Poor patients continued to be deprived of affordable but overburdened health care at government hospitals across Maharashtra as junior doctors did not resume their work today, despite Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors’ (MARD) call to end the five-day strike.

Patients outside Sion hospital on Friday.(Arijit Sen/HT)

Patient services, especially out-patient departments, will continue to be affected today as doctors are taking up only emergency cases. Hundreds of routine surgeries have been cancelled or rescheduled since Monday, inconvenicing thousands of patients and their families.

Nearly 4,500 resident doctors have been protesting for the past five days against assaults on them by relatives of patients. Seven cases of assaults and threats to doctors have emerged in the last fortnight.

MARD representatives will meet chief minister Devendra Fadnavis at 1pm today on the issue. The CM on Thursday assured agitating doctors to provide additional security at all government hospitals and a legal cell for them. On the same day, the Bombay high court directed them to tend to patients immediately and asked the Maharashtra government to provide adequate security at all government hospitals. It also asked the government and the civic body to withdraw show-cause notices issues to the striking doctors.

After the court order, the MARD asked the medical practitioners to rejoin duty.

“The order is now available on the HC website and we find it satisfactory. Now, there is a meeting scheduled with some state ministers at 1 pm today where we will discuss the issue (about their safety) once again,” said Dr Swapnil Meshram, general secretary of MARD.

After holding a meeting Fadnavis on Thursday, the doctors decided to wait for a copy of the minutes before taking a call to end the protest.

“Our fight is not limited to Mumbai. There might have been an increase in security at KEM and Sion hospitals. But what about Dhule and Aurangabad?” said a resident doctor from KEM Hospital, Parel.

Another resident doctor from Sion Hospital added that the MARD may have called off the strike, but we as individual resident doctors haven’t.

(With inputs from PTI)

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