Several doctors at private hospitals and clinics, associated with the Gurugram chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), are going to participate in an 11-day protest from 4th February onwards. This protest is for demand of the withdrawal of the Centre’s notification that is allowing post-graduate practitioners of Ayurveda to be trained for performing the surgical procedures.

They are planning to shut down the OPD services from February 8 to 14, however, emergency services, such as labour rooms, casualty and intensive care units, will be exempted from the protest.

The doctors are conducting a relay hunger strike also on 4th February and arrange a candle march from Pushpanjali Hospital to the deputy commissioner’s residence the next evening and they will then hand over a memorandum to him.

The doctors said that the notification that was given by the Central Council for Indian Medicine allowing Ayurvedic doctors to conduct and perform 58 surgeries will cut the total medical system into pieces.

Dr M P Jain, President of Gurugram chapter, IMA said that not a single surgery is possible without anaesthesia, infection control and ICU care that has to be borrowed from modern medicine. Dr Rajesh Kataria, secretary, IMA (Gurugram) said that not well-trained Ayurvedic surgeons might make the situation worse with complications and mortalities.

On 8th December, approximately 1,000 doctors who were associated with Gurugram IMA had carried out a strike in 25 hospitals, which included Medanta, Columbia Asia, Artemis and Paras. In November, the IMA had asked its members and the medical community not to impart disciplines of modern medicine to other systems students.

Source: The Times of India