Kolkata:

West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose on Wednesday paid a visit to the residence of the woman doctor who was allegedly raped and murdered at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata.

Mr Bose, who returned from Cuttack, went to the doctor’s residence in North 24 Parganas district straight away from the airport and spoke to her parents.

“I have listened to both the parents. I will be writing to the chief minister in a closed envelope. They told me certain things, confidential now,” Mr Bose told reporters.

According to sources close to the governor, Mr Bose was moved after witnessing the parents’ suffering because of the death of their daughter.

Mr Bose had spoken to the doctor’s parents over the phone twice on Tuesday and assured them of justice.

Healthcare services remained affected at state-run hospitals in West Bengal on Wednesday, as junior doctors continued their ceasework for the 13th consecutive day to protest against the alleged rape and murder of the postgraduate trainee at RG Kar hospital here.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

New Delhi:

Doctors have begun their 24-hour nationwide strike today in protest against the rape and murder of a 31-year-old trainee doctor in Kolkata.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has declared a nationwide withdrawal of non-emergency health services for 24 hours beginning at 6 am, over a week after the horrific incident at the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata. They also condemned the subsequent vandalism on the campus.

#WATCH | Patna, Bihar: Indian Medical Association (IMA) announces nationwide strike over RG Kar Medical College rape & murder incident.

(Visuals from Patna AIIMS) pic.twitter.com/kmCr5pq0ZN

— ANI (@ANI) August 17, 2024

All essential services will be maintained and casualties will be manned, the IMA said in a statement. The routine OPDs will not function and elective surgeries will not be conducted.

The withdrawal is across all sectors, wherever modern medicine doctors are providing service, the top body of doctors said.

“The RG Kar incident has brought to the fore two dimensions of violence in the hospital: A crime of barbaric scale due to the lack of safe spaces for women and the hooliganism that is unleashed due to lack of an organised security protocol,” it said.

“The crime and the vandalism have shocked the conscience of the nation. Today, both the medical fraternity and the nation are victims,” the statement added.

5 Demands Of Doctors On Nationwide Strike

The IMA has put forth five demands:

1. It wants a significant policy to address violence against doctors and hospitals. The doctors’ body is pushing for a Central Act that would incorporate the amendments made in 2023 to the Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 into the proposed Hospital Protection Bill of 2019. This move, it said, would strengthen the existing legislation in 25 states. The IMA has suggested that an ordinance similar to the one enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic would be appropriate in this situation.
2. The IMA has also demanded that hospitals be declared safe zones with the first step being mandatory security entitlements. “The security protocols of all hospitals should be no less than (that of) an airport. Declaring the hospitals as safe zones with mandatory security entitlements is the first step. CCTVs, deployment of security personnel, and the protocols can follow,” it said in the statement.
3. The IMA has demanded a thorough overhaul of the working and living conditions of resident doctors, including the 36-hour duty shift that the victim was in and the lack of safe spaces to take a rest.
4. The IMA has also called for a “meticulous and professional” investigation of the Kolkata horror in a specific time frame and rendering of justice besides identifying those involved in the vandalism of the hospital premises and awarding exemplary punishment.
5. The doctors’ body has also sought an appropriate and dignified compensation to the bereaved family commensurate with the cruelty inflicted.

The trainee doctor was raped and murdered last week inside a medical college in Kolkata where she worked, triggering nationwide protests among doctors. Anger at the failure of tough laws to deter a rising tide of violence against women has fuelled widespread protests by doctors and women’s groups across the country. 

A team of doctors in Kolkata successfully removed the screw of a gold nose pin from a woman’s right lung after she accidentally inhaled it. At first, 35-year-old Varsha Sahu wasn’t too concerned after inhaling a part of the nose pin that she had been wearing since her wedding 16 or 17 years ago, BBC reported. She thought the pin had gone into her stomach and would naturally pass through her digestive system.

However, things took a turn for the worse when she started facing health issues, including shortness of breath. A month after inhaling the screw, she went to a doctor complaining of a persistent cough, and pneumonia. She was first prescribed medicines which didn’t work.

She then consulted a pulmonologist, who conducted a CT scan and a chest X-ray. These tests revealed a small object lodged in her lung, later identified as the screw from her nose pin.

“I didn’t know that the screw had come loose. I was just chatting and I took a deep breath and I inhaled it. I had no idea it went into my airway. I thought it had gone into my stomach,” Ms Sahu told the BBC. 

A pulmonologist then used a fibreoptic bronchoscope to try and dislodge the object from her lung, but he failed. The woman was then referred to Dr Debraj Jash, a pulmonologist at Medica Superspecialty Hospital. Dr Jash mentioned that if a second bronchoscope attempt failed, they might have to resort to invasive surgery.

“Sometimes we get cases where dry fruits or betel nuts have gone into people’s lungs, but most such cases involve young children or elderly people above 80. A woman patient in her 30s is an exception” Dr Jash said. “It is extremely difficult to pull out a sharp object with a regular flexible bronchoscope. The object had been in her lung for more than two weeks and tissues had already grown around it,” he explained.

“We had to be very careful because if during extraction, the screw came in contact with the airway – which is very narrow – it could cause injury and lead to bleeding which could cause a catastrophe,’ he further added.

However, the second bronchoscopy performed by him was successful and the screw was removed. He also called it an ”extremely rare case”.

The patient recovered and was discharged from the hospital four days after the operation.