Hyderabad: Stethoscopes went off the shoulders and the pens stopped writing prescriptions at the out-patient and non-emergency services in various government hospitals across Hyderabad and different parts of Telangana on Saturday, August 17. The doctors boycotted their duties chanting “No Safety, No Duty”, demanding justice for the brutal rape and murder of a junior doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on August 9.
From junior doctors to the senior-most surgeons were enraged, not because of this one incident that had abruptly ended the glorious career of a medico, but because it could happen to any woman irrespective of her profession or social standing.
Doctors gathered at the superintendent’s office at Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad in the morning, chanting slogans and demanding justice. The junior doctors and post-graduate students at OGH could relate to the victim, as they have been facing a lack of basic facilities and security while at work, especially during the night shifts.
“There was a time when only 10 percent of all doctors in this hospital used to be women. Today, whether it’s in PG or MBBS programs, 50 percent of the medicos are women. But the reality is that there are not even separate restrooms for male and female doctors in most of the departments,” a female PG medico told Siasat.com, on condition of anonymity.
“There are just two beds crammed inside a small room where we are required to sleep during the night, and out of 30 doctors on night duty, at least half of them are women,” she underlined.
The departments at OGH are spread across a vast area, and female medicos are scared to venture out of one block to reach another block. They take their male counterparts to escort them, as most of the pathways between the blocks are poorly lit.
The medicos don’t feel safe inside either. A PG student told Siasat.com that people do enter the premises with weapons and there is little that the police personnel could do.
“There was this criminal who was brought for a check-up to the hospital, and he was shouting at me. There was only one police personnel accompanying him, and there was hardly anything he could do about it,” she exclaimed.
Doctors are expected to put in a marathon 45-hour shift at least once a month, and at least twice a week they are required to work night shifts.
The availability of proper changing rooms, sleeping areas, toilets, and bathrooms within the premises is crucial for the safety of female doctors. However, many government hospitals in Hyderabad, such as OGH, which was originally built in the 1920s with additional blocks added throughout the later part of the century, were constructed before the 2000s. These facilities were designed to meet the needs of the gender mix of doctors from that era.
“While the facilities for patients are being improved, those for the female or even the male doctors are not getting improved. We have been waging movements for almost five years now, and very little change is happening, and that too after we are making compromises,” said another PG medico at the Hyderabad hospital.
Similar is the condition of nursing officers (staff nurses) working in various government hospitals in Hyderabad and Telangana, where they hardly have proper changing rooms in their respective wards, and in some cases their toilets are located right beside the patients’ toilets. Some of the changing rooms either lack doors entirely or have broken ones.
As the state government ambitiously pushes to complete the construction of four super-speciality hospitals in Hyderabad and plans to build a new facility for OGH, medicos and healthcare workers are urging the government to ensure that these hospitals are equipped with adequate infrastructure, facilities, and robust security measures to prevent an incident like the ‘RG Kar’ from occurring in Telangana.
What measures could be taken to improve the facilities in the existing establishments, it is only at the discretion of the state government, especially the medical and health department to ponder over.
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