WB Health dept suspends doctor for revealing dengue outbreak 'facts' on Facebook

Kolkata: West Bengal Health and Family Welfare Department suspended a government doctor after he posted a message on Facebook, alleging that the authorities were suppressing facts relating to the dengue outbreak.

The suspension letter of doctor Arunachal Dutta Choudhury stated that his posts amount to "misinterpretation in the public and are derogatory to the hospital administration".

Choudhury, in one of his social media posts, claimed that the hospital admitted around 500 patients on October 6, which was much more than the capacity of the hospital. He further described how he struggled to reach the patients across scores of others lying on the floor.

"People are dying of fever. I'm trying to console them. In the death certificate, I'm writing 'fever with thrombocytopenia'... not dengue," Choudhury wrote in his post.

The doctor was posted at Barasat District Hospital, which is located about 30km north of Kolkata.