india

Updated: Jun 14, 2019 13:50 IST

Doctors across the government and private hospitals in Telangana staged token protests on Friday morning to express their solidarity with their colleagues who had struck work at Kolkata in protest against the brutal assault on a doctor.

At several hospitals in Hyderabad, including Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences and Gandhi Hospital, doctors assembled on the hospital premises at 9 am and raised slogans demanding that violence against doctors be stopped forthwith.

“We, however, did not stop any work in the hospital, but continued to extend our services wearing black badges as a token of protest,” Dr Sanjeev Singh Yadav, secretary of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Telangana chapter, told Hindustan Times.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) called for a nationwide protest on Friday against growing number of violent attacks against doctors across the country.

Singh said protest demonstrations had taken place in all the IMA branches and hospitals in Telangana from 9 am to 10 am, before the doctors resumed their work. “We shall hold a meeting of the IMA representatives in the evening to express solidarity to the striking doctors in Kolkata. We shall submit a representation to the state government requesting it to take stringent action against anyone who attacks the doctors in service,” he said.

The IMA secretary said at least 10 incidents of attacks on doctors had taken in place different hospitals in Telangana in the last eight months. On May 20, a senior medical officer working at the NIMS was allegedly assaulted by four attendants of a patient who received head injuries in a drunk driving accident case. Later, NIMS Resident Doctors’ Association members staged a protest against the alleged attack.

On March 1, a medical graduate in the same hospital was allegedly attacked by a patient’s attendants.

In February this year, hundreds of doctors in Gandhi Hospital boycotted their duties in protest against the assault on a paediatrician by the family members of a two-month old infant who succumbed to severe illness. Another 300 doctors from Niloufer Children’s Hospital also struck work in protest.