The striking medicos have decided to intensify their indefinite agitation against the government decision to raise the retirement age of medical college teachers and doctors under the State Health Services Department.
Junior doctors said on Saturday that they would launch an indefinite fast before the government Secretariat here if the government did not respond to their demands.
The strike by postgraduate doctors and house surgeons had already hit the functioning of outpatient departments in all the medical colleges. Many patients had to wait for long for consultation at the outpatient wing of the hospitals and there were reports of patients having been discharged in view of the shortage of hands to attend to them. In Kottayam, the strike took a turn for the worse when the MBBS students, who have been boycotting classes in solidarity with the striking junior doctors, laid siege to the office of the college Principal and employees when the authorities tried to conduct examinations excluding them.
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Meanwhile, Health Minister K.K. Shylaja said all issues raised by the medicos had been discussed. The government had accepted some of their demands and promised to consider the other demands favourably. The medicos had also issued a statement announcing their decision to back off from the strike move. The subsequent decision to launch the strike was the result of intervention by persons with political objectives, she said.
In an apparent bid to find a solution for the logjam, Indian Medical Association (IMA) Kerala State president E.K. Ummer and secretary N. Sulphi came up with a proposal that the government should fix the retirement age of doctors in both medical colleges and the State Health Service at 60 years. They also sought immediate formation of a medical recruitment board so that recruitment of doctors could be streamlined.