West Bengal: Healthcare services affected as doctors protest rape, murder of colleague

Kolkata, Aug 17 (PTI) Healthcare services took a hit across West Bengal on Saturday as doctors joined their junior colleagues in the cease work, demanding justice for the rape and murder at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

Services at the outpatient departments of both government and private hospitals were affected as doctors also protested the vandalism at the RG Kar MCH on August 14.

“Our agitation will continue. This is the only way to get our demands fulfilled. How can people get inside the hospital and attack us even when the police are present? We can understand the actual motive of the vandalism,” a protesting doctor said.

Non-essential healthcare services at the state-run SSKM Hospital, Sambhunath Pandit Hospital, and Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital, among others, were crippled because of the agitation. Similar was the scene at the private healthcare facilities in the state.

A postgraduate trainee doctor was allegedly raped and murdered while on duty at the RG Kar MCH last week.