Security meet after clash in North Bengal Medical College and Hospital

Siliguri, Aug. 18: A meeting of the governing body of North Bengal Medical College and Hospital will be held tomorrow to take stock of the security on the campus in the wake of a clash between junior doctors and local people on Tuesday night.
The meeting will be attended by north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb and Siliguri MLA Rudranath Bhattacharya, who are also the chairperson and member of the governing body respectively.
“Such clashes are frequent at the NBMCH because of lack of adequate security. So, we are holding the hospital’s governing body meeting tomorrow to take important decisions on the upgrade of security measures there,” Bhattacharya told The Telegraph over phone from Calcutta today.
The MLA is a former doctor of the NBMCH and also the chairperson of the Assembly standing committee on health.
Eight persons had been injured and five police jeeps vandalised in the violence, which was triggered by a minor altercation between some junior doctors and a patient’s relatives.
The police initiated a suo motu case against 13 MBBS students and junior doctors for destroying government property.
Sources at the NBMCH said the upgrade of security was of paramount importance.
“There are 80 security guards at the hospital and they work in three shifts. So, there are only 26 or 27 guards present at one point of time. But this number is not enough for the sole-referral hospital in north Bengal where nearly 1,000 are admitted on an average a day and around 900 people visit the out-patients departments. In addition to this, there are hundreds of patients’ relatives visiting daily. We require at least 150 security personnel to manage the huge crowd,” said a hospital official.
In fact, the junior doctors who numbered 190 abstained from duty yesterday to demand adequate security on the campus.
“We submitted a memorandum to principal Anup Kumar Roy and superintendent Saibal Gupta with a list of demands regarding security measures at the hospital. They have agreed to implement some security measures immediately. The authorities will post additional security guards in gynaecology, casualty and paediatric wards where the rush of patients is always high and incidents of violence occur frequently. The four boys’ hostels will also have security guards from now on and the names of all entrants will be registered,” said Anurup Saha, the assistant secretary of the Junior Doctors’ Council at the NBMCH.
-TT