Strike In Bengal State-Run Hospitals Flops

 B Prasant

THE much-publicised call for a day’s strike on November 6 in the state-run medical colleges and hospitals in Bengal that the SUCI-Trinamul Congress combine called for proved a total flop.  The call was given by the two political outfits and their supporters among a small section of the junior doctors (interns and house staff) to ‘protest’ against the suspension of their brethren who had virtually run riot at midnight at the R G Kar Medical College and hospital in north Kolkata on November 1 when they had beaten up members of the family of a patient and had assaulted the representatives of the electronic media present for recording it. 

The junior doctors supporting the Trinamul Congress and the SUCI had also attacked the police of the nearby Chitpore police station who had come to defuse the situation.  The junior doctors had snatched a rifle from a policeman and had sought to run away with the bullets having broken open the butt of the gun.  The Left Front government went on to terminate the housemanships of the two principal accused and also to suspend four interns involved in the incident.  The corporate media played up the strike call by seeking to ‘justify’ it through identifying it as a ‘protest’ against ‘police atrocities,’ in a situation where the police were seen to be at the receiving end of the assault that went on that night.

Responding to queries from the media at the Writers’ Buildings on November 6, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said that everything remained normal in the medical colleges and hospitals of the state.  The isolated attempts at causing disruptions were virtually shooed off by the vast majority of the doctors, nurses, and employees for whom it was another working day.  The call given to boycott classes too fell through comprehensively.

Elsewhere in Kolkata, addressing the media at the state office of the SFI, the leadership of four Left students’ unions, SFI, AISF, AIPSU, and AISB said that a section of the corporate media was out to defame the healthcare system of Bengal in a motivated manner.  Calling upon the Trinamul Congress and the SUCI to learn the lessons from the utter failure of November 1 hospital strike call, the Left student leadership asked them to withdraw the students’ strike they had called on November 10.  The Left students’ organisations had already said that they would oppose the November 10 strike called by the Trinamul Congress and SUCI.

The leadership of the Association of Health Service Doctors (AHSD), and of the Junior Doctors’ Council (JDC) told INN/PD on November 7 that the “vast majority of the doctors of the state are not misled by the campaign of either some opposition political parties or their publicists in the corporate media” and they added to say that “we appeal to everybody concerned to allow us doctors to work unhindered in the complex task of battling against diseases and death.” 

They pointed out that the corporate media, falling over one another in its hurry to continuously focussing attention of the people on the alleged ‘mismanagement of state-run healthcare in Bengal’ would never bother to highlight the reality prevailing in the hospitals and the health centres in the state.”  Dr Kajalkrishna Banik, general secretary of the AHSD said: “The media appears to be bent upon indulging in lies and distortions about the state-run healthcare system in Bengal in a clear attempt to subserve the interests of the private-run hospitals and nursing homes.”