Docs’ strike: 45 dead in 4 days, talks fail
Ten more patients in Bihar’s government-run hospitals died on Thursday due to denied medical attention caused by the unrelenting state-wide strike by junior doctors that entered its fourth day. The toll of dead patients reached 45 even as the government’s efforts to end the impasse failed.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar, who returned to Patna from New Delhi, reacted to the crisis of Bihar’s paralysed medical services by simply saying: “Ab aaye hain to dekhenge na.” (Now that I am back, I will see about it.)
Speaking to journalists, he talked at length about the demands he raised in Delhi for a special category status to Bihar and the plans for setting up two top-notch universities in the state, but his terse response to the latest plight of the poor was seen by some analysts as lacking both urgency and interest.
A meeting between a 12-member team of junior doctors from Bihar’s six medical college-cum-hospitals and the state’s principal health secretary, Amarjit Sinha, yielded no satisfactory results. While the bureaucrat told the doctors about the steps underway to fulfil their demands and urged them to resume their services, they left the meeting to convene their own general body meeting.
“We will end the strike only after meeting the CM and getting his assurances,” said Dr Birendra Kumar, one of the 12 doctors, after the meeting. But there was little effort either from the doctors’ side or from the CM’s office for arranging this demanded meeting on Thursday evening, thus adding more length to the four-day strike.
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