Kolkata: Twenty-year-old Jayanti Rai has been lying in the waiting room of Nil Ratan Sircar (NRS) Medical College & Hospital since Tuesday morning as junior doctors have been on a strike from Monday night.
Jayanti’s plastered foot has a tumor. After being referred by doctors of Malda Medical College and Hospital, her mother brought her to the state capital all the way from Balurghat in South Dinajpur district in north Bengal.
Ketni Rai, Jayanti’s mother, is distraught as she is waiting for the emergency and out-patient department services to resume and her daughter to get the required treatment.
“I wish the strike gets over soon. I have brought my daughter from Balurghat. I had no information about the strike,” she said.
Another teenager, Raj Bhuinya, was carried to the hospital by his elder brother to the emergency department of the NRS hospital after a senior doctor told him he would attend to him.
However, the staff at the emergency department locked the gates and did not allow them to enter the building stating that the hospital was not functioning.
Raj’s brother was still hopeful that the doctor would attend to him, but after realising the intensity of the junior doctor’s strike, he decided to take his brother to the doctor in their locality.
“I don’t know what has happened to my brother. The doctor had told me to go to the emergency building and said he would be coming there,” said Raj’s brother Anil Bhuinya.
Many such hapless patients and their family members were being turned away at government hospitals across the West Bengal.
Most patients from the districts have nowhere to go apart from government hospitals.
At the Burdwan Medical College and Hospital, the staff was seen breaking locks of the emergency building after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday afternoon announced at SSKM hospital in Kolkata that junior doctors should resume duty else they would have to vacate their hostel quarters.
At the NRS hospital, families of patients and others barged into the premises in the evening to demand resumption of emergency and OPD services, but were pushed out by police and junior doctors.
Banerjee’s threatening remark has not gone down too well with the striking doctors who were determined to continue their agitation even if they had to vacate their hostel accommodation across various government hospitals.
Junior doctors also met Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi who assured them of intervening into the matter. He said he would speak to the health secretary for a speedy resolution to the crisis.
As the standoff persisted with junior doctors getting support from their colleagues in AIIMS, Delhi, (who would join the strike on Friday) patients, especially those with little means to get treated at private facilities, continued to bear the brunt.
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