Maharashtra Government offers security to doctors, some call off strike
Mumbai: Some resident doctors decided to call off their strike on Wednesday evening after the Maharashtra government gave them an assurance of increased security, better crowd management system at public hospitals and health insurance among other things.
Members of the Maharashtra association of resident doctors (MARD) met medical education minister Girish Mahajan at the Vidhan Bhavan to resolve the issue.
Around 4,500 resident doctors across the state had gone on mass leave in the backdrop of the recent spate of attacks on doctors by relatives of patients.
However, even as some resident doctors decided to resume duty, a majority of them have decided to continue with the strike, said sources. The doctors had struck work from Monday.
Mr Mahajan had warned the striking doctors that the government would stop their salaries for the next six months after which the MARD agreed to discuss the issue.
“The doctors have withdrawn their strike and will resume the duty from 8 pm. We have agreed to some of their demands like — increase security, have crowd management system. emergency alarms, install more CCTV cameras etc,” said Mr Mahajan.
He added that to reduce unnecessary crowding near patients, all government hospitals have been instructed to keep only one entry door instead of multiple entries.
“Like private hospitals, the government hospitals will also issue passes to patients’ relatives to restrict the entry. We will soon have the system to manage crowds," Mr Mahajan explained.
The government is also willing to pay Rs 33 crore for deployment of 1100 security guards at the 16 medical colleges. “We will be having 700 security guards in the next 15 days from Maharashtra Security Board. They are already trained with good fitness level and can handle emergency situation. We were also told by the doctors to install an alarm system for emergency situation, which we agreed. We will install more CCTV cameras in hospitals. Every hospitals will have security committees to take review of the situation. The committee would include hospital dean, social activists, residents doctors etc,” he said.
The medical education department is also considering to have training sessions for doctors on how to communicate with the patients. "In an emergency situation, doctors need to communicate sensitively with the relatives of patients. The Centre has guidelines on providing training to the doctors on this line. We will soon start the training," Mr Mahajan said.
