The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has taken strong exception to the doctors’ strike that inconvenienced hundreds of patients and affected emergency medical services across the State on Tuesday.
Acting chairperson P. Mohandas called the boycott a crime. The doctors’ strike had put in peril the lives of hundreds of patients undergoing treatment at critical care facilities in scores of government and private hospitals.
Physicians and medical students had struck work to protest against the provisions of the proposed National Medical Commission Bill. Their main objection was centred around a contentious clause that allowed practitioners of other systems of medicine, primarily Ayurveda and Homeopathy, to practise allopathy once they undertook a short-term ‘bridge course’.
'Depriving patients of treatment'
The SHRC said the strike was tantamount to the denial of treatment to patients. It was a blatant violation of human rights of the sick and ailing. Doctors had a right to protest. But it should not be at the risk of the lives and health of patients.
Mr. Mohandas took particular notice of an incident at the General Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. He said he saw television visuals of striking doctors dissuading another doctor from treating patients. They pulled her out of the medical ward where she was attending to a long queue of patients, including women and children. The act was a blatant transgression of the doctors’ oath.
The SHRC said no one had the authority to divest the common man of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Right to life was an absolute right. He said the so-called ‘medical bandh’ deprived hundreds of their right to medical care. “It was an unpardonable crime,” he said.
He ordered the Director, Health Services, to inquire into the incident at GH. He also asked the officer to report to the SHRC all such events of treatment denial within 14 days. Mr. Mohandas also sought a report from the State Police Chief on incidents of treatment denial.
