Over 1,300 resident doctors at PGIMER go on strike

More than 1,300 resident doctors at Chandigarh's premier healthcare institute PGIMER began an indefinite strike on Saturday in protest against the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill.

Except emergency and ICU services, outpatient department (OPD) services remained affected at the Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) here.

"Resident doctors withdrew all hospital services on Saturday. But emergency and ICU services were not disrupted," PGIMER Association of Resident Doctors president Uttam Thakur said here.

Thakur said the strike would continue indefinitely until their concerns are addressed.

"We will not hesitate to escalate by shutting down even our Emergency and ICU services if expedited measures are not taken," he said.

PGIMER authorities have advised patients that all routine services, including OPDs and elective procedure, would remain suspended till further notice.

Stating that they had no intention to cause inconvenience to patients, the protesting doctors said they had no option but to go on strike against some provisions of the NMC Bill.

Doctors have been protesting against some of the provisions of the NMC Bill which has been passed by the Rajya Sabha.

They have been raising concerns regarding role of community health providers (CHP) vis-a-vis a trained doctors and the NEXT (National Exit Examination).

The Bill empowers the Centre to override the decisions and recommendations of the National Medical Commission and autonomous boards.

Protesters also pointed out that the Bill would decrease the representation of elected members from 75 per cent (as was in Medical Council of India) to 20 per cent in NMC.

"The ambiguity of the term 'Person connected with modern medical profession' needs to be clarified. What are the checkpoints to ensure that the Community Health Providers (CHPs) will restrict to limited practice; and what will be the consequences if they exceed their prerogative," Thakur asked.

"We believe that the deficiencies of the current healthcare system cannot be fulfilled by undertrained healthcare providers. It will infact overburden the system by having to deal with the consequences of mismanaged cases," he said.

The bill takes away the autonomy of the institutes of national importance in deciding their curriculum, he said.