A drunk patient and his relatives assaulted a female doctor working at night at Mumbai's civil hospital on Sunday morning, August 18. As per the information, The incident occurred at the Sion Hospital amid an ongoing protest against the rape-murder of a trainee doctor at a Kolkata hospital.
Resident doctors at the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital said the attack occurred at around 3.30 in the morning on Sunday when the doctor was on duty in the ward. The accused patient came to the hospital with injuries on his face, and while he was being treated, he and his relative were under the influence of alcohol, abused the lady doctor on duty and threatened her.
Later, the debate escalated between 5 to 6 drunk relatives of the patient assaulted her physically. She also received some injuries during this.
Head of BMC MARD, Dr Akshay More, told NDTV, "This is an incident of 3:30 in the morning today where a patient and some of his relatives reached the hospital in a drunk condition and got into a fight with the woman resident doctor. It is a matter of great concern that this is happening in Mumbai."
"The patient arrived in casualty after midnight in an intoxicated state with 7-8 relatives. He was involved in an assault before he came to the hospital, and had injury marks on his face... Owing to his injuries, he was given an ENT reference around 3:30 am," said Dr Akshya More, General Secretary of Sion-MARD and BMC-MARD.
"Our on-call resident doctor in the ENT department was a female. Following a routine procedure, she undressed the wounds to examine them. That is when the patient started verbally abusing her. The relatives, instead of controlling the patient, started verbally abusing the resident doctor. Things escalated to physical assault very quickly... Nurses intervened but by then the doctor had sustained abrasions on her hands. By the time security was called, the patient and the relatives had fled... Such incidents are very frequent and mostly go unreported but we could not let this one slide, especially after what happened in Kolkata," More added.
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The doctor gave her statement at Sion Police Station, and a First Information Report (FIR) was filed. However, the patient and his family fled the scene.
"Our doctors safety is non-negotiable. This situation requires immediate attention and implementation of strict security measures in all hospitals," Doctors of BMC MARD said.