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Kathmandu, July 8: Outpatient services at hospitals across the Kathmandu Valley remained shut for the second consecutive day on Monday due to the ongoing strike by the Nepal Medical Association (NMA).
Patients visiting hospitals, including the Bir Hospital, had to return without treatment. “Outpatient services are fully closed. Patients who came for checkups had to go back,” said a staff member at Bir Hospital’s ticket counter.
Teaching Hospital was found to be checking only old patients, while other major hospitals in the capital also confirmed the closure of outpatient departments.
The NMA has said it will continue the protest until the government addresses its demands. The association also claimed that the government has made no effort so far to resolve the issue.
thousands of ailing people from across the country will be deprived of treatment on Monday, with the Nepal Medical Association, the umbrella body of medical doctors, announcing a boycott of non-emergency services.
This time, the protest is against the Consumer Court’s recent verdicts, which slapped heavy penalties on doctors found guilty of gross negligence in treatments that resulted in serious complications and patient death.
This is the second time in two months that the association has called for a complete halt to non-emergency services at health facilities across the country. Earlier, in the last week of April, the association had instructed its member doctors to shun services to put pressure on private medical colleges to provide stipends on par with those offered by government-owned colleges.
On Sunday morning, the agitating doctors held one-hour sit-ins on hospital premises to show their disagreement with the Consumer Court’s verdicts.
As a symbolic protest, the association plans to collect photocopies of the Nepal Medical Council licence from its members on Monday, which will be returned to the Council’s office bearers on Tuesday.
“The situation has escalated in such a dramatic way that we can no longer continue our work smoothly,” said Dr Anil Bikram Karki, president of the association. “Doctors cannot pay millions of rupees in fines for trying to save lives, and our experience shows that authorities do not listen unless we resort to stern protests.”
Karki and other association members had earlier met Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and urged him to amend some provisions of the National Penal Code Act-2017 and the Consumer Protection Act-2018. “The prime minister had assured us to sort out the issue soon,” Karki said.
According to Karki, his association was forced to start a new protest programme because the Consumer Court continues to issue verdicts against hospitals and doctors.
In its recent verdicts, the court imposed heavy penalties on three private hospitals—Rs 5.68 million on the Chabahil-based Om Hospital (8 percent to the hospital and 20 percent to the doctors involved); Rs 5.7 million on Grande City Clinic (Rs 4 million to the doctors and Rs 1.7 million to hospital); and Rs 14.5 million on Himal Hospital (70 percent to the doctor and 30 percent to hospital).