Violence Against Doctors: Over 3.5 lakh medical professionals observe National Protest Day

Telangana Junior Doctors Association have even expressed alarm over the instances stating, " If these continuous attacks persists, there will be a day that most of students in our country hesitate to take medical profession and the most of the medical professionals will be insecure to work in this country."

Miffed at the assault on medical practitioners, President of Delhi Medical Council (DMC), Dr Arun Kumar Gupta also tweeted;

Taking strict note of the incidents, IMA announced a nationwide protest seeking a uniform non-bailable central law to put an end to such attacks as it disturbs the morale of healthcare workers across the country.

It demanded implementation of the Central Hospital and Health Care Professionals Protection Act with IPC and Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), standardization, and augmentation of security in each hospital, and declaring hospitals as protected zones among others. The Act seeks to punish people who assault doctors on duty and other healthcare professionals by imposing jail for up to 10 years.

"Currently, 21 states have their local laws, but what we need is a strong central law to protect doctors from violence - In one instance, 11 years have passed and a doctor in Nashik has died of head injury, but the person is still not caught, there was a change introduced in Epidemics Act due to Covid-19, but even then about 300 small instances of violence were reported in 2020 alone- Doctors are laying their lives on the line — 750 had died in 2020 and about 700 more have died during the second wave," IMA said in the statement.

IMA asked all its State and local branches across the country to observe the protest by wearing black badges, masks, ribbons, shirts and running awareness campaigns against violence targeting healthcare professionals.

Also Read: Save The Saviours: IMA To Hold Nationwide Protest On June 18 Against Assault On Doctors

Up in arms for the cause, more than 350,000 doctors across the country participated in the protest while strictly adhering to COVID protocols.

Various medical organizations including the Association of Physicians of India, Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), the Association of Surgeons of India, Medical Students Networks (MSN), Junior Doctors Network (JDN) came in solidarity and started their agitation at 9am onwards.

The State IMAs also extended their support and the doctors of different medical colleges across the nation participated in the protest.

Standing in solidarity with the National IMA, FAIMA too joined the protest with the primary objective to stop assaults on medical professionals with the slogan "Save the Saviours."