New Delhi: The resident doctors at Safdarjung Hospital called off their strike on Thursday evening after the Central government decided to deploy 100 security guards with “immediate effect.”
The services, including the emergency, was affected for a day at the Central government-run hospital as resident doctors went on a strike after one of their colleagues was allegedly manhandled by a relative of a patient on Wednesday.
The strike badly affected the patients who were asked to return from the emergency gate by the security guards without being treated on Wednes-day and Thursday afternoon. “On Wednesday, aro-und 2.30 pm in the afternoon, a 30-year-old patient assaulted a woman doctor alleging that his treatment was being delayed by the latter. Such incidents are not new to us.
Earlier also we witnessed such violence. Our security should be increased to check such attacks. We will go on indefinite strike till are demands are fulfilled,” Dheer Singh, the president of Safdarjung resident doctors, had said on Wednesday.
An FIR was also filed in this regard demanding proper security arrangement in the hospital, said Mr Singh.
In a meeting between a delegation from the hospital and officials from the ministry of health and family welfare on Thursday, it was decided that 100 security guards “are to be employed with immediate effect”.
“There is additional assurance of fulfilling further requirement of security personnel in due course and this is to be discussed in the next quarterly meeting,” a circular, issued after the meeting, stated.
This is one among many cases of attacks on doctors in the last few months in Delhi.
In fact, many doctors from across Delhi government hospitals had gone on a strike in April, affecting routine and emergency services, to protest the rise in cases of violence against healthcare professionals.
The movement’s objective was to “bring to the attention of the nation the atrocities faced by the medical profession”, the IMA had said on its website.
Earlier in March, around 40,000 doctors from the Indian Medical Associati-on had joined the resident doctors in Maharashtra who were on a strike de-manding better security.
