ARJUN POUDEL

Docs at Bir stop taking in patients: Director 

While the administrators at Bir Hospital were on Monday celebrating the 125th anniversary of its founding, resident doctors perusing higher degrees under the National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS) were busy changing the name of the hospital on the signboard to ´Sick Hospital´. 

The agitating doctors, who have been staying away from services since Sunday, said that they are compelled to engage in the boycott as the authorities concerned keep turning a deaf ear to their just demands. They said that the hospital itself has been ailing for years now, because of which hundreds of thousands among the poor have been suffering hugely and are compelled to seek the services of private hospitals, which are comparatively far more expensive. 

"The hospital has even been lacking basic equipment such as CT-scan, MRI and C-arm X-ray for many years, and so we called it the sick hospital ", said Dr Mangal Rawal, chairman of Resident Doctors Association of Nepal (RAN). They are compelled to go on strike, he said and warned that there would be sterner protests if the hospital administration failed to address their rightful demands.



Agitating resident doctors paste a paper with the word ‘Birami’ over the Bir Hospital’s signboard. The word, which means sick, was chosen, apparently, to allude to the poor conditions at the hospital. (Dipesh Shrestha/Republica)

Dr Santosh Poudel, a member of RAN serving at Bir Hospital, said that due to lack of equipment, doctors at the hospital are compelled to treat patients on the basis of general assessment. He said that all doctors at the hospital have been referring patients to better equipped private centers. 

Dr Arjun Prasad Dumre, another RAN member at the hospital, said that due to lack of basic equipment at the hospital, patients and doctors alike have been suffering a lot. "We need to make big surgical cuts to identify the ailments," he said adding that if the hospital had the equipment, doctors could conduct their surgery after making only small incisions. He complained that due to lack of essential equipment students are deprived of quality training.

With the resident doctors not attending to patients, service at Bir has been severely affected. The hospital, which has been relying on the resident doctors, said that consultant doctors there stopped admitting new patients. "Our senior doctors stopped admitting new patients," said Dr Kedar Prasad Century, director at the hospital. He admits that the hospital relies heavily on the resident doctors, without whose help it could not continue its services. 

Demanding sweeping reforms at Bir, including with regard to essential equipment, resident doctors have boycotted services since Sunday. About 150 resident doctors pursuing MD/MS degrees at the hospital are on strike. They threatened to request fellow students at 10 other allied hospitals of NAMS to join the protest. Major hospitals such as Bir, Patan, Maternity, Kanti Children´s, Sahid Gangalal National Heart Center, Nepal Mental Hospital, Tilganga Eye Hospital, the Army Hospital and Bharatpur Cancer Hospital in Chitwan are allied to NAMS, and about 300 resident doctors at these hospitals have been pursuing their MD/ MS degrees.

The agitating doctors are also demanding a convocation for graduating doctors. NAMS has not organized a convocation for the last 14 years because of which hundreds of doctors who have completed their MD/MS degrees remain deprived of an opportunity to participate in the convocation ceremony.

Published on: 29 July 2014 | Republica