Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Joining the nationwide call for strike by Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association (FORDA), junior doctors of Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital and other associated hospitals of Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College struck work for a few hours on Monday morning and also boycotted working in the OPD of the hospital.
Junior doctors also staged demonstrations against the government with the demand to speed up the process of counselling of NEET-PG at the earliest.
“Our country is already facing an acute crisis of doctors and the delay in admitting new students will increase the gap. NEET-PG exam was scheduled for January 2021 but it could be held in September but its counselling is stuck and postponed due to pending petitions over 10 per cent EWS quota and 27 per cent OBC quota with the Supreme Court,” president of Junior Doctors’ Association Indore Dr Piyush Singh Baghel said.
He added that normally, post-graduates are admitted in May. Now, due to the postponement of counselling, the new batch of PG students will arrive in March next year. Thus, instead of three batches, resident doctors of only two batches are attending all the patients for the last one year.
"In the absence of a new PG batch, only 66 per cent resident doctors are available to attend to patients. This is putting extra pressure on the resident doctors, who are already suffering due to long Covid-19 duties," Dr Baghel said.
Junior Doctors’ will continue to boycott the OPD work on Tuesday as well.