The meeting between the doctors of the College of Medicine & Sagore Dutta Hospital (COMSDH), also known as Sagar Dutta Medical College, Kolkata and the college council, including principal, Prof Parthapratim Pradhan; dean; heads of departments (HoDs) and police officers concerning the attack on on-duty medicos, has ended. Terming it unfruitful, the doctors have decided to continue the cease-work.
On September 27, a mob of 15-20 people entered a medicine ward on the pretext of caring for a female patient, resulting in them threatening on-duty female doctors, vandalising the ward, and physically harassing on-duty female postgraduate trainee (PGTs), intern doctors, nursing staff, and general duty assistants (GDAs). Since then, the junior doctors have boycotted their duties and today, September 28, the Resident Doctors Association (RDA) of the college stated that it would continue the cease-work until all the proposed security measures materialise.
Today's meeting began at around 12 and ended around 4.45 pm. It is learnt that, till 2.30 pm, the meeting was between the doctors and the college council. The president of the college, RDA Dr Monojit Mukherjee, revealed that the Directorate of Medical Education (DME) Aniruddha Neogi; Directorate of Health Sciences (DHS) Swapan Saren and the Principal Health Secretary, Narayan Swaroop Nigam have joined the meeting later.
"We put forth our demands and time and again, we were given assurance. However, dissatisfied over the meeting, we will continue our cease-work until and unless we see something on the ground," said the president.
These are the demands put forth by the doctors in the meeting:
1) Written justification from the hospital authority regarding their inadequacy in preventing the incident that happened on September 27
2) Showcause and written accountability of all the security personnel (both police and private security) who were responsible for maintaining the security during the incident
3) Written justification from hospital authority on the lack of any CCTV in the female medicine two ward and outside the female medicine on-call room, due to which, certain incidents of physical assault on the healthcare workers could not be documented
4) Written justification for the absence of any assigned personnel to monitor the ongoing CCTV footage as it could have prevented the occurrence of such an incident. The Supreme Court had already instructed all the hospital authorities to install adequate CCTV
5) Written justification from the concerned authorities as to why the interns who were involved in the vandalisation incident on 05/09/24, against whom FIRs are lodged and a disciplinary committee investigation is still underway, are allowed to join duties, without the completion of any investigation. They demanded an immediate suspension of all such miscreants involved in this incident with immediate effect
6) Written justification as to why the internal committee probing the complaints of sexual harassment of students by Dr P Banerjee has not even begun as per memo no COMSDH/Prin/CC/1829/1(15)/24
7) Written justification as to why the internal committee probing the complaints of examination scam by Dr Somshubhro Chatterjee has not even begun as per memo no COMSDH/Prin/CC/1829/1(15)/24.
8) Update on the proceedings of the inquiry committee on the vandalism incident that took place on 05/09/24.
9) Immediate approval of the formation of an Authorised Resident Doctors' Association of CMSDH
10) Written account of the authorities on the update of the security measures as per Supreme Court Order no SMWR 2/2024
