The protest taken up by Gandhi Medical College junior doctors gained strength as Telangana Junior Doctors Association (TJUDA) units from three government medical colleges expressed support to the protest and threatened to boycott elective duties.
House Surgeons (MBBS interns), post-graduate students are also called ‘Junior Doctors’. The JUDAs serving in Gandhi Hospital have boycotted duties November 11 demanding that non-COVID services be resumed there. Currently, only COVID-19 patients are admitted at the tertiary care centre. The students said that they are losing out on academics as they are attending only COVID patients.
A few days ago, TJUDA members held a meeting to discuss the issue. The association’s president Dr V Naveen said a decision was taken to support the protest. Subsequent to this, TJUDA representatives from Osmania Medical College (OMC), Kakatiya Medical College (KMC), and Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS) submitted representation to the respective hospital superintendents expressing support to the protest.
While RIMS and KMC representatives said that they will boycott elective duties from Wednesday if Gandhi Hospital junior doctors’ demands are not fulfilled, OMC representatives did not specify a date from which they will not attend elective duties.
Further, the association’s OMC unit members said that non-COVID case load on OGH has increased leading to insufficient beds and that resumption of non-COVID services at Gandhi might decrease the load.
DME visits Gandhi Hospital
Meanwhile, Director of Medical Education Dr K. Ramesh Reddy along with Gandhi Hospital superintendent Dr M. Raja Rao inspected the hospital to plan how COVID and non-COVID patients have to be separated, how to provide critical care services to COVID patients. On November 12, he issued orders directing the superintendent to start non-COVID services before November 21.
