Fourteen doctors deployed in government hospitals in Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao district resigned from their posts, alleging excessive review of their work and misbehaviour from district, sub-divisional and block-level authorities, PTI reported on Thursday.
The doctors, in charge of community and primary health centres in Unnao, complained that the multi-level review process was an attempt to make them scapegoats for the rise in coronavirus cases in the district.
Eleven of the 14 doctors signed a joint resignation letter and submitted it to Unnao’s chief medical officer on Wednesday evening, according to NDTV.
“Our teams hit the ground at noon every day, ensures that coronavirus patients are isolated, provides them with medical kits and then at 4-5 in the evening the sub-divisional magistrate calls up for a review,” Sharad Vaishya, one of the doctors who signed the letter told reporters. “The doctors are forced to drive 20-30 kilometres to healthcare centres for these meetings.”
Vaishya also alleged that the chief medical officer and other district officials harass them with threats of first information reports, financial audits and other proceedings, in case a lapse was found.
“Despite working round-the-clock, it is being made to look like coronavirus cases are rising because of us,” Vaishya said. “We are held guilty for not being able to trace a patient even in cases where the person gives a wrong address or phone number.”
Another doctor, identified as Sanjeev, told PTI that the district magistrate and chief medical officer misbehaved with them during their work in pandemic-hit rural areas for the last one year. The doctors, however, assured that the resignations will not affect their Covid-related work till talks were on with the authorities.
However, Chief Medical Officer Ashutosh Kumar refuted all the allegations and claimed that all the doctors had returned to their work. “We will work together,” Kumar told PTI.
District Magistrate Ravindra Kumar said that the Chief Minister Adityanath’s Office had spoken to the doctors and a solution on the matter will be reached. “They are part of our team, they are not strangers...We will get over this,” he said, according to NDTV.
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