Hospital services have been disrupted in Indian cities as a doctors’ protest spreads nationwide after the rape and murder of a trainee medic in the city of Kolkata.
Thousands of doctors have been protesting and calling for tighter security measures in the West Bengal capital and surrounding areas, with the Federation of All India Medical Association saying on Wednesday its members will continue their “indefinite” strike.
It comes after a 31-year-old trainee doctor was raped and murdered last week at a government-run hospital.
A police volunteer was subsequently arrested in connection with the crime.
The incident sparked uproar in the western Maharashtra state as 8,000 government doctors descended on its capital Mumbai on Tuesday, halting work in all hospital departments except emergency services, local media said.
During protests outside a large government hospital, junior doctors were demanding justice for the victim while wearing white coats and holding posters reading, "Doctors are not punching bags”.
Meanwhile, similar protests have been organised in cities such as Lucknow, and in the western tourist resort state of Goa, where protests hit hospital services.
Doctors in India's crowded government hospitals have long complained that not enough is done to curb violence levelled at them by people angered over the medical care on offer.
The country's biggest doctors' group, the India Medical Association (IMA), issued a public notice urging the police to “ensure adequate safety measures” at medical facilities. It added that violence against medical students should be “promptly investigated” when it happens.
“Pedestrian working conditions, inhuman workloads and violence in the workplace are the reality,” the group told Health Minister JP Nadda in a letter released before they met him for talks on Tuesday.
The health ministry did not immediately comment.
A high court in Kolkata ordered that the criminal investigation be transferred to India's federal police, the Central Bureau of Investigation, indicating that the authorities were treating the case as a national priority.
