T’PURAM: PG medical students have decided to boycott all emergency services from Wednesday as the government has not yet responded to the six-day-old strike carried out by them without affecting patient care in all medical college hospitals.
Resident doctors across the state have been peacefully protesting for almost a week against the delay in NEET PG counselling and the shortage of junior residents in various hospitals in the state. However, there has been no positive response on concrete action from the state health department, said Dr Athul Ashok, Kerala Medical Post-graduate Association (KMPGA) state president.
“We are left with no other option but to boycott all emergency services from Wednesday, excluding Covid postings. We wish to emphasise and reiterate that we do not want patients to suffer. Rather, we want more doctors to be employed for better patient care,” said Dr Naveen R, KMPGA state secretary.
Association leaders said that resident doctors of all government medical college hospitals are already overburdened, and there are currently only two batches in place of the usual three. With the looming threat of the third Covid wave, they are concerned and desperately want the healthcare system to be well prepared with adequate manpower in hospitals.
“We have already proposed a plan to recruit non-academic junior residents on a temporary basis to share our duties so that we could concentrate on our academic works as well. We have already discussed the issues with the health minister on August 8. The decisions made that day still remains in papers,” said Dr Naveen.
