PBT to move PIL against striking doctors for patients' sufferings

Kolkata, May 26 (UNI) People for Better Treatment (PBT), an organisation dedicated to protect patients, today threatened to file a Public Interest Litigation(PIL) against the striking doctors in West Bengal for allegedly putting the lives of innumerable patients in grave danger.

In an open letter to state Health Minister Suryakanta Mishra, PBT president Dr Kunal Saha and its Secretary Malay Ganguly said, '' With great anguish we observe that the innocent patients in the state have been put under severe stress by the striking medical students and doctors protesting against the Centre's decision to increase the quota for blackward class students. '' They said while they fully agreed that any increase in backward classes quota in medical colleges was ''candidly wrong and can do much harm to the society at large'', the striking doctors had also no right to make the defenceless patients suffer by calling strike at hospitals and abandoning their regular services.

'' We strongly protest the disruption of government hospital services by striking doctors and medical students, '' the PBT officials in the letter reiterated.

Quoting from the ''West Bengal Clinical Establishment Act'' and from the Medical Council of India's ''Code of Ehics Regulations 2002'' prohibiting strike or any other action by the medicos that might jeopardise the welfare of patients, the PBT officials urged the Health Minister to immediately take action to bring back normalcy in government hospitals.

They said the PBT would have no option but to move the judiciary with a PIL if no action was taken to restore normalcy in all government hospitals in the state without further delay.

Incidentally, barring at emergency, services in all the seven government Medical Colleges and Hospitals in West Bengal have virtually come to a standstill in the wake of the ongoing strike by medical students and doctors, causing untold misery and sufferings to the patients.

UNI ABA SJC SI DB2054