KOLKATA: Hospitals and clinics across India turned away patients except for emergency cases on Saturday as medical professionals started a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata.

More than one million doctors were expected to join the strike, paralysing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases.

The government, in a statement issued on Saturday after a meeting with representatives of medical associations, urged doctors to return to duties in the public interest.

A 31-year old trainee doctor was raped and murdered last week inside the medical college in Kolkata where she worked, triggering nationwide protests among doctors and drawing parallels to the notorious gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012.

The strike cut off access to elective medical procedures and out-patient consultations, according to a statement by the Indian Medical Association (IMA).

“Junior doctors have all been on strike, so this would mean 90pc of doctors are on strike,” Sanjeev Singh Yadav, a representative of the IMA in the southern state of Telangana, told Reuters.

Outside the RG Kar Medical College, where the crime took place, a heavy police presence was seen on Saturday while the hospital premises were deserted, according to the ANI news agency.

Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, which includes Kolkata, has backed the protests across the state, demanding the investigation be fast-tracked and the guilty be punished in the strongest way possible.

A large number of private clinics and diagnostic centres remained closed in Kolkata on Saturday.

Dr Sandip Saha, a private paediatrician in the city, told Reuters he would not attend to patients except in emergencies.

Hospitals and clinics in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Guwahati in Assam and Chennai in Tamil Nadu and other cities joined the strike, set to be one of the largest shutdown of hospital services in recent memory.

Patients queued up at hospitals, some unaware that the agitation would not allow them to get medical attention.

Published in Dawn, August 18th, 2024