Stand-off at GGH continues as medicos stick to their demand

The stand-off between the junior doctors and the administration of the Government General Hospital continues for the seventh day crippling both outpatient and inpatient wings of the largest teaching and referral hospital in the State.

Efforts to convince the junior doctors to call off protest have proved futile as the former continued to demand the arrest of the professor.

It was a week ago, a PG student of Department of Gyneacology and Obstetrics, B. Sandhya Rani, had committed suicide by injecting herself anaesthetic agent.

In her diary, Dr. Rani blamed a senior professor, V.V. Lakshmi, of continuous harassment forcing her to end her life. Dr. Lakshmi has been evading police since then.

The district administration, however, seemed to be clueless in tackling the issue.

The developments over the last week have again put the GMC and its teaching hospital GGH in the spotlight. It was over a year ago the reputation of the GGH was in tatters after an infant was killed by rodents in the neo-natal ICU forcing the government to order a massive clean-up but things changed very little after the incident.

Problems galore

The GMC and the GGH continued to be saddled with problems ranging from shortage of teaching staff to infrastructural deficiencies. Gone are the days when the professors used to command respect from the students. The GMC had many illustrious men like D. Jagganatha Reddy, who set the pace for the rapid development of the college.

Things are different now. With most of the professors have a foot outside and focus on their own lucrative practice, the resident doctors share the lion’s share of the work.

“Most of the students are under a lot of stress and they do not have any window to ventilate their anxieties. The GGH has not conducted inter departmental meetings for some time where the issues could be discussed. The professors should also take the blame as they do not spend time with students and are busy with their own practice,’’ said a senior professor.

Of all the departments, the Department of Gynaecology is the busiest teeming with patients and handles an average of 50-100 cases daily.

But the department is woefully short on infrastructure. With most of the cases handled by junior doctors under the supervision of professors, there are chances of even the slightest of errors resulting in fatalities.