NO COUNTRY FOR THE SICK

Bangladeshis have learnt to expect the worst over the years. We don't expect our law enforcing agencies to protect the innocent and arrest the criminals anymore. We don't expect our politicians to be our guides anymore; we have rather accepted the grim fact that their main job is to polarise us along ideological lines while pushing us to a disastrous precipice. We don't expect our garment workers to return home safely even though the country's  strongest economic pillar rests on their bone-cracking toil.
Even so, did anyone ever expect that our doctors would sink so low? Didn't we, in spite of all our frustrated expectations, believe that there are still a few good people, and a few good professions, doctoring being one of them? Who do we owe our lives to? When we have serious blood-spilling, pus-oozing wounds, repulsive enough to drive away even our dear ones, who will come forward and heal us? And isn't this why they are regarded in higher esteem than those in other professions? But what they have done at BIRDEM, RMCH, Mitford and most recently, DMCH has, on top of inflicting pain on patients, put a serious dent on that belief we so dearly protect. Should we then learn to expect nothing of our doctors either?
The manner of their protest goes clearly against their work ethics, as also against the grand Hippocratic Oath they have taken before formally stepping into this profession. Standards of their professional conduct can be found on the official BMA (Bangladesh Medical Association) website where it is clearly stated (under the heading: Duties of Doctors to the Sick) that “A doctor must give emergency care as a humanitarian duty unless he is assured that others are willing and able to give such care.” It also states under the same heading that “A doctor owes to his patient complete loyalty and all the resources of his science.”
Of course this oath to abide by their duties should be no reason for us common people to humiliate them, leave alone attack them physically. If we as patients or attendants of a patient have any serious complaint of negligence against a doctor, there's a legal way to address that. A patient has no right whatsoever to physically abuse a doctor. In much the same way, when a doctor faces humiliation or attack in the line of duty, he has all the right to protest and also to bring this matter to legal procedures. He, however, has no right to abandon his working station while leaving emergency patients untreated. What if an emergency cardiac arrest patient dies because of this? Who will take the responsibility of his life? This is a sheer violation of their professional conduct.
Their misconduct has not ended there. Interns and doctors at RMCH and Mitford have gone as far as beating quite a few journalists. And it seems they applied all their medical knowledge to make sure that some of them were critically injured. And this violent dimension is the most disturbing aspect of their behaviour. It establishes their resemblance with two groups of people: one consisting of transport workers and the other of political goons. The first group believes in holding us hostage by way of work abstention; perhaps they will impose a countrywide transport strike to force the government to realise their unethical demands. And the second believes in violence, their motto being 'might is right'. Nevertheless, even the violent goons usually do not show the temerity to attack journalists in the line of duty. Media people were at these hospitals to collect news which is part of their job, a very important job which guarantees our right to know. By brutalising journalists, these doctors and would be doctors have demonstrated the most brutal form of unprofessional behaviour in double violation of their duty.
The dent they have put on our belief will take time to heal. Meanwhile, we the common citizens would expect, if for the last time, that the sense of their oath-bound professional duties will dawn on them considering the ailing patients in OPD. We hope this  will make them follow the right path in case of any future commotion caused by a patient's attendants, by taking the help of the law, instead of resorting to techniques of thugs and goons.