The day has been tagged as a "black day" for the medical fraternity!
New Delhi: After the allegedly brutal crackdown of police on the protesters against the delay in college allotments after the NEET postgraduate exam, the resident doctors' groups in Delhi on Monday threatened a complete shutdown of medical services.
According to the visuals, the Federation of Resident Doctors' Association (FORDA) has been spearheading the protest for a month now, said 4,000 of its members ended a sit-in at the Sarojini Nagar police station around midnight on Monday to adhere to the coronavirus night curfew.
The officials of FORDA said they had been stopped from marching towards the Health Ministry's offices earlier in the day.
FORDA got their back from many medical associations. The Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA) has called upon all RDAs associated with it as well as other doctors' associations across India for a complete shutdown of healthcare services from Wednesday. The AIIMS Resident Doctors' Association has come out in support of FORDA, saying it shall shut down all non-emergency services on Wednesday if no adequate response is received from the government within 24 hours.
The day has been tagged as a "black day" for the medical fraternity. Several women doctors alleged that they were manhandled during their protest in the day that culminated in an intense face-off with the police and a vigil well into the chilly December night.
In a report of the news agency Press Trust of India, patient care remained affected at three major government-run hospitals like Safdarjung, RML and Lady Hardinge - among others, while junior doctors said the delay in NEET-PG counselling continued to hold back an entire cohort from entering medical colleges.
Alleging that they are being overworked and "operating at 66 per cent capacity", they have been demanding the urgent recruitment of new doctors, which has been on hold for over a year because the Supreme Court has been hearing a case involving reservation in medical admissions.
FORDA president Manish Nigam said that resident doctors of a large number of major hospitals on Monday "returned their apron (lab coat) in a symbolic gesture of rejection of services".
He also added that "We also tried to march from the campus of the Maulana Azad Medical College (MAMC) to Supreme Court, but soon after we had started it, security personnel did not allow us to proceed."
Despite all the alleged claims by the association and the protesters, the police deny using excessive force or abusive language and said only 12 protesters were detained and released later.
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