Patients suffer as interns continue strike

Patients at the outdoor department of Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College Hospital in Bogra have been suffering badly as the interns continued their work abstention for the fourth consecutive day today.

The interns formed a human chain on the hospital campus around 10:00am demanding their security at workplace, our Bogra correspondent reports quoting Kutubuddin, a spokesperson of the doctors.

They also demanded the ‘outdoor departments’ of all the hospitals across the country to be shut from 11:00am to 12:00pm today.

Contacted, the hospital authorities however said they do not know of any such demand.

Meanwhile, medical services are also being hampered at some hospitals in Bogra, Sylhet, Rajshahi and Barisal as the interns joined the strike in solidarity with their colleagues in Bogra, report our local correspondents.

Bogra interns started the strike on March 2 in protest of penalising four of their colleagues for "assaulting" a patient's relative.

A group of interns allegedly beat up twice Rouf Sarkar, 35, son of a patient admitted at the Bogra hospital, over a trifling matter on February 19. A video of the incident went viral on social media.

Later, Bangladesh Medical and Dental Council launched an investigation and suspended the internships of four interns for six months based on the probe findings.