Patients face heat as doctors continue protest at Government Medical College, Amritsar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, August 21

Patients coming to the Government Medical College (GMC) here are paying the price for the ongoing protest by the resident doctors’ association as its members are boycotting the OPD services and elective surgeries.

Doctors at the college are protesting over the rape and murder of a resident doctor at a medical college in Kolkata. After the incident, voices regarding the safety of medical professionals at government hospitals have grown louder. Various government functionaries have visited the college and promised to take steps suggested by doctors regarding improving security for the staff at the health institution.

However, a visit to the college on Wednesday revealed that patients at the hospital were not getting medical advice as the OPD doors were closed. Security personnel present at the OPD gates were turning patients away while stating that doctors were on protest.

Gurjinder Singh, a patient who had undergone a leg surgery and had come to the hospital for a check-up said, “I came all the way from my village to the hospital only to find the OPD closed. A security guard told me that I should come after the strike is over.”

He said everyone felt sympathetic for the unfortunate doctor who was murdered after rape. Patients said they did not create any security issues or pose any kind of threat to medical professionals as most of them considered doctors next to God.

Resident doctors said sometimes they had to face the public wrath despite not being at any fault. “After listening to political statements on the media, patients come here hoping that they would get a five-star treatment and that too free of cost. But they are forced to buy medicines from the market which forces them to think that the government is sending all supplies to the hospital, but doctors are dishonest and corrupt,” a doctor said.