Gandhi Hospital junior doctors have decided to go on an indefinite strike from 1st November to pressurize the government for starting non COVID-19 services at the hospital. Mentioning that the present arrangement of providing only COVID-19 services is causing the academic problems for several junior doctors who are not on COVID-19 duties. They urged the government to make optimal use of the available healthcare staff by permitting other services too.

The strike notice that was submitted by students to the Gandhi Hospital Superintendent stated, at present, approximately 2,000 healthcare staff including nurses, junior doctors, teaching faculty, patient care staff are taking care of only 400 patients in a 1,500-bed hospital. Commencing of non-COVID-19 services would help in optimum utilisation of healthcare facilities and also the workforce.

A committee in Gandhi Hospital had detailed the way the non-COVID services can resume at the hospital in September, as the coronavirus cases had started to reduce in numbers. In the meantime, junior doctors who are also PG students have suffered a major setback as academics have come to a pause since the last 8 months owing to the complete shutting of non-COVID services.

A junior doctor said that they did not have any clinical learnings of specialisations which they had opted for.

Source: The New Indian Express