VIOLENCE AGAINST DOCTORS

 

‘DOCTOR’- the one who saves a life, this word itself is a ray of hope for many. Being a doctor is considered as a pride for someone, nowadays they are proving that they are life saviors, in these tough times whole medical fraternity is sacrificing their well being and serving their nations with immense care and selflessness, but as the saying is –‘one dirty fish spoils the whole pond’, something similar to this is happening nowadays.

Doctors are facing many challenges, violence against them is one of the issues. Due to some unethical and corrupt members of the medical fraternity whole healthcare industry is being doubted. Well, violence against doctors is not something new, doctors, nurses, & medical staff is facing violence for many years whether physically, verbally, psychologically.

Let’s have a glance at what Indian doctors are facing- a few days back a video went viral in which a doctor from Assam is brutally attacked by some family member of a covid patient whose life couldn’t be saved. The attackers got arrested but the mess is done. We understand that people are emotionally affected, we are losing our loved ones, some illegal activities are happening and some pathetic humans in the mask of doctors are there, but this doesn’t give us the right to blame the genuine one. Yes, it’s difficult to find out the difference between reals and fake but nobody has the right to just start violence against anyone.

People are not aware of the fact that in 2020 our president Mr.  Ram Nath Kovind had approved the epidemic diseases      (amendment) ordinance,2020 which not only cover the physical   attacks but also damage of property or damage of their living   and working premises during the health crises such as covid-19   According to this, any act of violence shall be punished with   imprisonment of 3 months to 5 years and a fine of RS. 50,000 to   RS. 2 lakh and in case of grievous hurt it will go up for six months to seven years of imprisonment and RS.1 lakh to RS. 5 lakh of fine. The offender is also liable to pay compensation to the victim and twice the fair market value for damage of property. These punishments are there to protect the healthcare professionals.

As per the information provided by the MCI BoG, 12,55,786 allopathic doctors were registered in our country as on 30^th June 2020. According to some other articles of PubMed.gov In the year 2010 there were 2,00,000 homeopathy doctors were registered and approx. 12,000 more being added every year so currently, we will be having 3,30,000 homeopathy doctors and adding 4,50,000 Ayurveda doctors in it become 20,35,786 doctors in total which gives us the doctor population ratio of 1:848 (on 80%  availability) which in turn perfectly satisfy the ratio 1:1000 given by WHO. But logically if we see in these tough times pandemic has affected everyone doctors are also human it is equally hazardous for them also, we all are aware that how beds, oxygen, and medicines are in shortage and how some greedy people are taking advantage of this but let’s not forget that there are some genuine warriors are there who are making your people survive. Think once that doing this violence and unnecessary blaming the doctors without investigating, how it will affect the future aspirants and upcoming doctors, how the current doctors will stay motivated to save more lives.