Patients suffer as Mitford staffs abstain from work
A patient is being wheeled inside the city's Mitford Hospital by her attendant instead of the hospital employees, who went on a 5-hour work abstention yesterday protesting the assault incident on the hospital's deputy director. Photo: STAR
Despite arrest of the main accused in an assault incident on the deputy director of Mitford Hospital in the city, doctors and employees abstained from work for five hours yesterday causing suffering to the patients. They also staged demonstration demanding arrest of all associates of the arrested Nasir Uddin, a Jubo Leage leader of Dhaka city unit, ensuring security of the hospital employees and setting up a permanent police camp there. The outdoor service, where several hundred patients seek treatment every day, was almost stopped during the work abstention by the employees under the banner of Swadhinata Chikitshak Parishad from 10:00am to 3:00pm. The patients admitted to the hospital also suffered as no doctor or nurse was present at that time. A pregnant mother, Asma Akhter, 26, who came to the hospital around 11:00am with labour pains, was found leaving without any treatment. “I waited for one and a half hour. Since there is nobody to attend to me, I am going to Dhaka Medical College Hospital,” she said. However, the hospital Director Brig Gen AKM Fariduzzaman told The Daily Star that emergency services were not hampered at all. “But some of the departments of outdoor were closed due to the work abstention,” he said. Following assurance from the hospital authorities to meet their demands, the agitating employees went back to work. When contacted, the hospital's Deputy Director Abul Hashem Khan said Nasir along with four others entered his room on Saturday noon, assaulted him and ransacked the room. “It was because while I was on a round on Friday night, I found some people standing in the gynae ward and, getting annoyed, I asked them to leave. Nasir was among those people,” Abul Hashem said. Officer-in-Charge Salahuddin Khan of Kotwali Police Station said they arrested Nasir, a resident of the area near the hospital on Saturday afternoon. A case was filed under speedy trial act and they prayed for a seven-day remand. But they could not arrest Nasir's associates, he added.
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