Rangpur interns continue strike

Intern doctors at Rangpur Medical College and Hospital (RMCH) continued their work abstention for the second day yesterday protesting attack on colleagues and demanding security of staff.
The nurses at the hospital observed two hours' work abstention yesterday demanding the same issue.
The student nurses also called a five-day strike yesterday demanding security at their workplace.
The interns enforced the strike on Friday after Dr Mahmudul Hasan Firoz and two nurses of the hospital were assaulted by relatives of a patient on Thursday night.
Police and hospital sources said, Mahbubur Rahman, a resident of Satgara Mistiripara, was admitted to the hospital with old age complications and died an hour after admission on Thursday night.
Following the death of the 65-year-old patient, the interns and relatives of the patient locked in an altercation. At a stage, the relatives of the patients beat up a doctor and two nurses.
Yesterday, the interns had a meeting with the deputy director of the hospital in the morning where the DD requested them to withdraw the strike.
But the interns announced that their strike will continue till arrest and punishment of the culprits.
The intern doctors association at the hospital had demanded police camp on the hospital premises due to attack by the outsiders several times. But the authorities remained indifferent, they said.
At the meeting, deputy director Dr Golam Mostafa formed a three-member team to investigate the matter and ordered it to submit report within five days.
Mostafa said, they filed a case against two relatives of the patent.
Meanwhile, the patients of the hospital started to suffer for absence of intern doctors. A good number of patients left the hospital yesterday, hospital sources said.
Earlier, the intern doctors brought out a procession on the hospital premises yesterday morning.
The procession paraded the hospital compound and ended at the administrative building.