The departments of the Government General Hospital (GGH) located on the Siddhartha Medical College (SMC) campus and the departments in the old GGH at Hanumanpet worked with skeletal staff on Wednesday also.
Requisitions were made for additional doctors to replace the 220 house surgeons and post-graduate students who are on strike, but none turned up for duty.
There was tension at the administrative office of the Dr. N.T.R. University of Health Sciences when the police tried to prevent the junior doctors from burning an effigy. The junior doctors wanted to burn the effigy of Special Officer Babu Rao, whom they held responsible for the failure of talks with the Government. The junior doctors had brought an effigy with placard, on which they wrote “Babu Rao”, for burning. The police did not allow the burning of the effigy until the agitating doctors removed the placard.
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Hospital superintendent S. Babu Lal, who is out of station on official work, when contacted, said that the strike was not hampering the functioning of the GGH. “The junior doctors are merely helpers. What if a few helpers don’t turn up for duty, it is not going to hamper the work,” he said. Dr. Lal said that exaggerated figures of the number of patients that died at the hospital were finding place in news reports. On an average ten patients die in the Vijayawada GGH (old and new) in a day, he said.
While a burns victim succumbed to injuries four others perished due to various ailments at the GGH on Wednesday.