Hyderabad: On Monday afternoon, an ambulance pulled over to the Osmania General Hospital at the front gate. A man jumped out from the vehicle and tried to enter into the building to get a stretcher. But, before he could even reach the door, he was stopped by a security guard, who told him to back away and take the patient to some other hospital.
“My mother is extremely sick, and she just suffered from her second heart stroke. But, here they did not even allow us to enter into the hospital. Now I do not know what to do. I fear my mother will die on the way if I drive her to another hospital in this traffic,” said Abdul Raheem, a 40-year-old tailor from Kalapathar, whose mother Ayshabi, 68 was just turned away from OGH because of the ongoing doctor’s strike.
With more than 250 junior doctors and house surgeons boycotting their duties except emergency services since Sunday night at OGH, hundreds of patients like Ayshabi were left in lurch on Monday. At least six surgeries were cancelled. Hundreds of patients are still waiting at the hospital for the protest to get over. Two deaths have reportedly occurred after the strike began.
Junior doctors are on strike after a relative of a patient brutally attacked a female intern. While the resident medical officer claims that all patients who have been diverted are being sent to Gandhi hospital, patients claim that they are turned away from there, too, as junior doctors there are also on a strike.
Lokesh Beerakayala, member of Junior Doctors Association, “Over eleven hospitals have boycotted their electives like Osmania in solidarity. We understand that the general health of patients are suffering but the emergencies in all hospitals are running.”
Meanwhile, patients run from hospital to hospital in search of affordable treatment to be turned away. Afreen Begum from Kareemnagar says, “My husband has been a regular dialysis patient for more than six months. This time after travelling for so long, we were made to wait for more than six hours before he was taken to a room. We were not informed about the strike and no doctor came to check on my husband. Patients are just picked according to the discretion of the doctors and made to wait at the emergency room.”
Several patients are also being turned away from the emergency ward. Only fewer Medical Legal Cases are admitted at the ward. Sources said that more than 30 emergency patients were stopped and were asked to go to Gandhi hospital in the first half of the day.
Meanwhile, Chief Medical Officer Dr Shankar claimed that he tried to admit as many patients as possible into the emergency ward. “As you can see there are limited number of doctors here now. We had to ask few patients to go to Gandhi hospital. But, critical patients have been taken in,” he said.
As bystanders wait anxiously in the waiting room and at the entrance, junior doctors claim that the hospital is lot calmer ever since the strike started as the number of cases are few. However the number of patients who wait for approval to be admitted is staggering.
Fatima Azeez, a bystander says, “They refused to check The BP of my daughter. When I raised my voice and asked them if they were just going to let her die, they grudgingly accompanied me towards her. How can patients be held accountable for the hospital’s fault? Medical cases cannot be ignored or judged in severity according to the wishes of doctors.”
