After almost five days of medical services paralysis in Maharashtra, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has called off doctors' strike in Maharashtra after they met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
All the 40,000 doctors have reported back to work immediately. Dr Parthiv Sanghvi, Secretary of the IMA, told CNN-News18 that a fruitful discussion took place between IMA and the Government of Maharashtra. “CM Devendra Fadnavis has promised to fulfill our demands of providing adequate security,” said Sanghvi.
Fadnavis has informed the IMA representatives that more security has been provided in 16 hospitals since Thursday and it assured that the government will provide more security in the coming 10 days.
In a meeting with the IMA officials at Vidhan Bhawan in Mumbai, they were briefed about the steps the government is undertaking to make sure that such violent attacks don’t occur in hospitals again.
Around 4500 protesting doctors from the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) were asking the state government to ramp up the security to shelter them against violent relatives of the patients, provide safeguard against attacks in government hospitals and enforce stricter implementation of the Doctor’s protection Act. Around 40,000 doctors from the IMA had also joined the strike with the resident doctors. It has impacted medical services in about 40 hospitals across the city.
However, the junior resident doctors have refused to call their strike off and have said that they would like to speak to their lawyers before coming to a conclusion.
Fadnavis on Thursday appealed to the resident doctors to call off their strike, and today while addressing the Assembly, he said that 'enough was enough' and that continuing the strike despite assurances was totally insensitive.
"Patients are suffering and people are getting annoyed. Attacks on doctors are wrong, but if despite the written assurances from the government they continue the strike they are being insensitive," he said.
The Bombay High Court who was hearing the plea of the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) observed that that if they do not file an affidavit by 3 pm today, then it would initiate contempt proceedings against the association's president and secretary. The court had also previously rapped the doctors stating that this act of strike was nothing but “public anarchy.”
The court also warned the agitating doctors that “punitive action could be taken against them by government if they don’t resume work from tomorrow.”
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