Violence against Doctors: 10 lakh medical practitioners to show their protest on June 18

Doctors are frontline warriors like armed forces, they could sit at home, but they chose duty. Many times, doctors face mental violence in the form of absurd remarks.

New Delhi: Pursuing their demand for a central act against ongoing violence on doctors, 10 lakh modern medicine practitioners from 1700 branches across India will mark national protest day on Friday. “We are deeply hurt to see the increasing physical violence on the doctors and the health care professionals. The brutal assault on our young doctor in Assam, assault on lady doctors, horrifying incident in Hooghly West Bengal, Karnataka and even on veteran practitioners are really creating a mental shock to the practitioners. It’s occurring day in and day out, IMA is pressing for a central act against the violence with CrPC and IPC,” said Indian Medical Association (IMA) president Dr JA Jayalal.

He said that the proposed Health Services Personnel and Clinical Establishment (Prohibition of Violence and Damage to Property) Bill 2019, which seeks to punish people who assault on-duty doctors and other healthcare professionals by imposing jail from up to 10 years has not yet been implemented.

“There are many Central Health Laws such as PCPNDT Act, Clinical Establishment Act etc. Currently, 21 states have their local laws, but what we need is a strong central law to protect doctors from violence. In one instance, 11 years have passed and a doctor in Nashik has died of head injury, but the person is still not caught, there was a change introduced in Epidemics Act due to Covid-19, but even then about 300 small instances of violence were reported in 2020 alone,” Dr Jayala said.

Read: 730 doctors died in COVID-19 second wave, Bihar reported maximum fatalities: IMA

He said that 750 doctors died in 2020 and more than 700 died during the second wave. “They are frontline warriors like armed forces, they could sit at home, but they chose duty. Many times, doctors face mental violence in the form of absurd remarks,” said Dr Jayalal.

Plans for June 18

Dr Jayalal said that memorandums should be given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, senior ministers including Home Minister Amit Shah. All branches will submit a memorandum to local authorities. All 1700 branches are organizing events to mark the day. All speciality organisations like the Association of Physicians of India, the Association of Surgeons of India, the Medical Students Network, Junior Doctor Network are participating in the protest day from 9 am.

In Bihar and the Central part of Kerala, doctors will close their clinics in the morning to press this demand. Evening public interaction is arranged to form a coordination team in each branch to stop such violence. “We demand the government to ensure security in every hospital and declare hospitals as protected zones,” Dr Jayalal said.

On Ayurveda and Baba Ramdev

“Ramdev has apologized and acknowledged the yeomen services of modern medicine and has declared he will take the vaccine. IMA as well as many other branches across the country have filed police complaints against his malafide statements on the issue of vaccinations. “He spoke against allopathic modern medicines of Corona, modern allopathic doctors etc, which in our opinion is against the interest of citizens of our country. So accordingly, we have urged the Prime Minister to take appropriate action against him. We respect Ayurveda as part of our culture and ancient science, but we never go out and criticize it,” said Dr Jayalal.

Read: FIR against yoga guru Ramdev for spreading 'false information' on allopathy