No end in sight to interns' strike
Patients keep on suffering as work pressure on doctors, nurses mounts
In order to undergo a surgery on his left leg, Shahjahan Mia was admitted to Rajshahi Medical College Hospital a week back. He needed to have the infected wound dressed, but no doctor has visited him in the last three days.
“I badly needed a dressing, but the nurses were not doing it without the consent of doctors,” he said.
Holding her two-year-old ailing son in the arms, Marjina Khatun, 34, stood in a long queue outside Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College Hospital in Bogra. After one and a half hours, when she came near the ticket counter, she found it shut.
“I continued waiting in the queue. It was so tiring,” said the resident of Shajahanpur upazila, around 9:30am. Her son got cold and fever three days ago.
Marjina is one of a few hundred patients who faced the similar fate -- waiting in the sun for long hours, only to find the counter closed.
A staff at the hospital said interns forced the employees to keep the counter shut for an hour.
Similar situations -- in some places, it was worse -- have been prevailing in various medical college hospitals across the country as interns have been on a strike since Thursday.
The strike started after the health ministry suspended four interns of Bogra medical college for six months and transferred them to four other colleges, following findings of an inquiry that they beat up the son of a patient on February 19 over a trifling matter.
Interns say the inquiry was not done properly and a female intern faced misconduct by the patient's relative. They demand withdrawal of the penalty and security of the interns.
With the interns staying off work, doctors and nurses are facing tremendous pressure.
“Sufferings mount if a single regular staff abstains from work. Now think of the situation when all interns are absent,” said Shahidul Islam, a nurse at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital.
At Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital in Barisal, no doctor visited Omar Farque, 25, in the last 48 hours after he got admitted, let alone start treating him.
“Only nurses came to me and inquired, but there was no treatment,” he said.
Dr Solaiman, a doctor of the ward, said they were now attending only critically-ill patients due to the strike.
Another physician said every day around 350 patients visited the outdoor, and they were facing problems to see them amid the work stoppage of the interns.
He also spoke of an elderly blood pressure patient who left the hospital yesterday for Dhaka, failing to avail treatment in the hospital.
The interns were on strike also in Mitford Hospital, Chittagong Medical College Hospital, Sylhet MAG Osmani Medical College Hospital, Jalalabad Ragib-Rabeya Medical College Hospital, Sylhet Women's Medical College Hospital, North East Medical College Hospital, and Mymensingh Medical College Hospital.
“Our strike will continue indefinitely if our demand...is not met,” said Anup Sarkar, secretary of the Intern Doctors Association at Barisal medical college.
Dr Ehteshamul Huq Chowdhury, additional director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), said they had not issued any instruction on the interns on strike for the last two days. “We want them not to hamper treatment of the patients,” he said.
Dr Ehteshamul, also secretary general of Bangladesh Medical Association (BMA), denied that the patients were suffering. Interns are trainees; they do not treat patients, they only assist doctors, he said, adding that there were no reports of treatment being hampered.
Our district and divisional correspondents contributed reporting.