Striking doctors’ greed gone wild:two more babies die in Vadodara

After five babies at Vadodara’s SSG Hospital died during treatment on Friday due to ongoing junior doctors’ strike, today two more babies died in the same hospital due to doctors’ strike.

Junior doctors(post graduate students of medical) of the government and civic hospitals across the state are on strike demanding hike in their stipend for last three days. They want Rs 27,000 stipend per month.

This is junior doctors’ third strike in last two years period in the state. The government had hiked doctors’ stipend twice after both the previous strikes. Gujarat’s government and civic hospitals serve poorest of the poor people who are now suffering and literally dying due to strike, but doctors are not worried about their treatment! Their attitude is like ‘let the people die, we just want more stipend, and once we get the hike, we will again go on strike after some months to get more hike. We would continue our life-long business of blackmailing the government by taking poor patients as hostages again and again’.

It should be noted that the post graduate medical students are enjoying government subsidy and therefore pay negligent amount of fees. Gujarat’s tax payer people bear their burden of education. If these doctors were studying in private medical college, they could be paying lakhs of rupees to complete their study. The government gives five figure stipend every month to the medical students. In other states where fees are much higher, the government pays higher stipend but in Gujarat fees are negligible and stipends are not substantially lower.

Doctors on the strike argue that though they work more than their senior doctors, they are paid less. Now this argument can be applied to any firm. In most of the firms, juniors work hard and visibly ‘more’ ,but they are paid less than the seniors because there is some value of experience, especially in the medical field.

The government has already formed a committee to look into doctors’ stipend related issues but before the report is out, the doctors are on strike again, playing with lives of poor patients.