Private hospitals in Delhi have joined the on-going protest by government doctors demanding safe work environment here on Friday.
The nation-wide protest started after relatives of a deceased patient beat up a resident doctor at Mumbai's Sion Hospital. Nearly 4,000 resident doctors across Maharashtra have gone on mass leave in protest of the incident.
In Delhi, doctors at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) have been working with helmets on for the third day on Friday, while Thursday saw over 10,000 government doctors in the city on mass leave.
On Friday, leading private hospitals including Sir Ganga Ram expressed their solidarity for the agitation and partially suspend its operations.
“Our hospital expresses solidarity with concerns of IMA and DMA regarding safety of doctors. General and private OPDs of our hospital are not function on Friday. However, the in-patient as well as emergency services will function normally,” Dr. D.S. Rana, chairman of the management board at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, said.
Fortis Hospitals and Apollo Hospitals too extended their support to the movement. Fortis Hospital management maintained “Our doctors continuously strive to save and enrich lives. We strongly condemn the act of violence against doctors any other hospital staff. Safe and secure work environment is the basic requirement for caregivers to provide best possible medical care to patients. We at Fortis Healthcare are firmly committed to our patients, and our medical services remain unhampered.”
On Thursday, nearly 40,000 city doctors including ones from Delhi and central-government hospitals were on a mass causal leave throwing OPD services out of gear from 9 am to 4 pm. Several planned surgeries were postponed due to the agitation.
“The incident at Maharashtra is so grim that instead of providing security to resident doctors at their workplace, the state government is threatening them. Our fellow doctors were beaten up and the government is reluctant. All we want is just a safe environment at workplace,” Dr. Vijay Gurjar, president of Resident Doctors' Association of AIIMS.
