The four-day-long stalemate at the Sri Venkateswara Ramnarain Ruia Government General Hospital here ended by Friday afternoon, after the striking junior doctors decided to call off their agitation and resume work.
What started off as an altercation between two individuals was blown into a full-fledged controversy, resulting in the doctors staying away from duty and thus causing avoidable trouble to the patients. Official apathy in handling the sensitive issue was quite palpable, as it was allowed to slip out of control for three days.
It all started with the junior doctors striking work on Tuesday in support of their senior resident in the department of medicine E. Venkataramanaiah, who was allegedly abused and manhandled on Monday by M. Krishna Kumari, an office clerk in the cadre of junior assistant. With the medical and administrative fraternities supporting their members and sticking to their respective stands, the agitation turned into mass casual leave and abstention. All hell broke loose when Dr. Venkataramanaiah attempted suicide citing harassment and Ms. Krishna Kumari resorted to a similar step citing injustice. Even emergency services were hit on Thursday, after which the authorities stepped in to restore calm.
District Collector P.S. Pradyumna, who is in Vijayawada for the Collectors' Conference, deputed Sub-Collector Nishanth Kumar as his envoy to the hospital to get the details. On Thursday night, Mr. Kumar announced that the strike had been called off, but the students continued their agitation on Friday, much to his embarrassment.
On his part, Ruia Superintendent B. Sidda Naik issued proceedings announcing the suspension of the clerk from service and also her surrender to the District Medical and Health Office on administrative grounds.
The students further demanded that the clerk should not be posted again in Ruia hospital or its affiliated institutions.
Future course
Though apparently convinced, the unrelenting junior doctors declined to call off their strike till afternoon, with the demand to form a multi-level committee to prevent future assaults on duty doctors. The proposed panel will be tentatively headed by the Ruia Superintendent as its Chairman and will contain interns, students, house surgeons and doctors at various levels.
To tackle attacks on duty doctors, it was decided to install CCTV cameras in the hospital, especially the labour ward, paediatric and emergency departments, which had witnessed instances of patients' kin and onlookers turning frenzied.
Dr. Naik agreed to hasten the process, after which the students called off their strike.
