Hyderabad: Doctors strike hits medical services

Hyderabad: Junior doctors went on a hunger strike on Friday to oppose the passage of the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill which was passed by Parliament on Thursday. The protest paralysed elective and emergency services at Gandhi Hospital.

At the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (Rims), Adilabad, doctors took out a 2 km rally in the town, after boycotting elective and emergency services.

Doctors are against Sections 32 of the Bill pertaining to licence to health providers to practice medicine and section 15 which institutes a new exam, NEXT. Doctors have raised concerns over Section 45 of the Bill which they say empowers the Centre to override any suggestion of the NMC.

“The main contention is that the Bill provides a licence to 3.5 lakh unqualified non-medical persons to practice modern medicine. No one is clear what ‘limited medicine’ is and who is going to be given licenses. Institutionalising quackery will harm the medical profession and people are going to suffer,” said Dr Arjun of the Gandhi Hospital Junior Doctors’ Ass-ociation.

The doctors called the Bill an act of hypocrisy by the Centre. Regarding section 15, he said, “A person studies MBBS for five years and then you are going to test them with another exam. This shows the hypocrisy of government. We condemn this.”