EXPRESSING SOLIDARITY with household of the junior physician who was raped and murdered at a Kolkata hospital, not less than 70 Padma awardee medical doctors wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, asking him to personally intervene to handle the “alarming state of affairs” amidst the continued protest by medical doctors throughout the nation. Additionally they sought a particular regulation for defense of healthcare employees on the earliest.
“We stand in unwavering solidarity with the sufferer’s household, whose ache and loss are unimaginable. We additionally prolong our full help to the medical group, who’re more and more confronting such violence in the middle of their work,” the medical doctors stated of their letter.
They put forth 5 calls for — from harsher and time-bound punishment for perpetrators of sexual violence to enhanced security measures at hospitals. Supporting the demand of the protesting medical doctors for a particular regulation to guard healthcare employees, they urged for the harshest punishment for bodily or verbal violence in opposition to medical doctors. Additionally they requested for stricter implementation of current authorized provisions.
A regulation for prevention of violence in opposition to medical doctors was one of many calls for raised by a number of resident medical doctors’ associations such because the Federation of Resident Medical doctors’ Affiliation {and professional} our bodies such because the Indian Medical Affiliation (IMA).
Whereas a Invoice was drafted in 2019 after a nation-wide protest, it was by no means tabled in Parliament. “We strongly consider that an Ordinance to this impact will be introduced instantly, and the Invoice ought to be handed post-haste so that each one these working in healthcare supply programs within the nation can work with out concern, in service of struggling sufferers,” the letter to the PM stated.
The 2019 draft had proposed stringent norms, with punishment of as much as 10 years imprisonment and a wonderful of as much as Rs 10 lakh for violence in opposition to medical doctors on responsibility.
Dr Harsh Mahajan, one of many signatories and founding father of Mahajan Imaging, informed The Indian Express: “Though there is no such thing as a formal affiliation, we determined so as to add our voice and urge the PM to intervene himself. There’s a want for a separate regulation for medical doctors as a result of the situations they face are completely different from different professions. Many instances medical doctors need to work for 36 hours at a time and but they could not have entry to an obligation room to sleep. They might stay in hostels distant and need to stroll at nighttime. Simply depend the variety of incidents we now have seen within the final 5 years, one thing must be finished.”
Dr Yash Gulati, one other signatory and famend orthopaedic surgeon, stated: “The (Kolkata) incident was mentioned in a gaggle of Padma awardee medical doctors and we determined so as to add our voice. Whereas we perceive that generally family are distressed or they suppose that there was some negligence, however violence shouldn’t be the reply. There are mechanisms for recourse — medical doctors need to be protected at work.”
“Let this tragedy function a catalyst for actual, lasting change. We owe it to the late Nirbhaya, and to all victims of sexual violence, and to future generations to create a society the place such horrors are unthinkable,” the letter says.
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