Resident doctors resume strike as their demands remain unfulfilled

Resident Doctors of Ram Manohar Lohia, Safdarjung and Lady Harding hospitals in Delhi have restarted their strike over delay in NEET-PG 2021 counselling. As a means to show their protest, they have boycotted all services, including emergency. They have blamed the Government for making false promises.

There has been an acute shortage of resident doctors across the country because the NEET-PG counselling PG 2021 batch has been delayed by eight months.

The strike seemed to have ended on December 9, after the Health Ministry had assured the Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association (FORDA) that they would help fast-track the counselling process.

However, it looks like their demands were shrugged off because FORDA wrote to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on December 15, to inform him that it was going on strike again.

“With the threat of the third wave of COVID-19 looming large, the best the authorities could have done was to expedite the counselling and subsequent admission process. Instead, there is inaction and lack of urgency in the matter. Hence, as informed earlier, resident doctors are left with no choice but to go for withdrawal from all services (routine as well as emergency) in healthcare institutions, starting 17 December, 2021 onwards. The onus of this unfortunate situation affecting healthcare services is on the authorities,” FORDA’s letter stated.

FORDA also accused the Government of ignorance in the face of difficult times saying, “With the imminent threat of third wave of COVID 19, it is evident from the lackadaisical and ignorant attitude of the authorities that the healthcare, plight of overburdened doctors and suffering of poor patients is not of any importance to them at all.”