Docs' Stir Sparks Emergency As Patients Left In The Lurch

Pregnant Women Bear The Brunt Of Strike At Govt Hospitals In Capital

- Sakshi Chand

New Delhi: Three pregnant women — one in obvious pain, two who had completed the full term and were groaning with labour agony — begged, pleaded, wept and fought with the security staff at Sucheta Kripalani Hospital. But with the doctors on strike there, they have eventually turned away. There were similar moments at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and Safdarjung Hospital. At all three, patients were in discomfort, lying outside the hospitals awaiting admission, while services were disrupted by the residents’ protest.

Many patients had arrived unaware that a strike was on and kept mumbling about how they didn’t have the money to keep travelling to and from hospital. Jagdish Kushwah, 30, had come with his senior citizen parents to RML from Mahoba in Uttar Pradesh. A dismayed Kushwah told TOI, “Both my kidneys aren’t working well and I need a transplant. We have spent Rs 5,000 reaching here but we did not know there was a strike going on. We don’t have anywhere to go, so we will stay here and see what happens.”