Indian doctors still off job after end of 24-hour strike

KOLKATA — Some Indian junior doctors remained off the job on Sunday, demanding swift justice for a colleague who was raped and murdered, despite the end of a 24-hour strike called by the country's biggest association of doctors.

Doctors across India have held protests, candlelight marches, and have refused to see nonemergency patients in the past week after the killing of the 31-year-old postgraduate student of chest medicine on Aug 9 in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Women activists say the incident at the British-era R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital has highlighted how women in India continue to suffer despite tougher laws following the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012.

"My daughter is gone but millions of sons and daughters are now with me," the father of the victim, who cannot be identified under law, told reporters on Saturday, referring to the protesting doctors. "This has given me a lot of strength and I feel we will gain something out of it."

India introduced sweeping changes to the criminal justice system, including tougher sentences, after the 2012 attack, but campaigners say little has changed and not enough has been done to deter violence against women.

The Indian Medical Association, whose strike ended at 6 am on Sunday, told Prime Minister Narendra Modi that as 60 percent of India's doctors are women, he needed to intervene to ensure hospital staff members are protected by security protocols akin to those at airports.

"All healthcare professionals deserve peaceful ambience, safety and security at workplace," it wrote in a letter to Modi.

But in Modi's home state of Gujarat, more than 6,000 trainee doctors in government hospitals continued to stay away from nonemergency medical services on Sunday for a third day, though private institutes resumed regular operations.

Pressing for demands

"We have unanimously decided to continue our protest to press for our demands," said Dhaval Gameti, president of Junior Doctors' Association at B.J. Medical College in Ahmedabad. "In the interest of patients, we are providing emergency medical services but not taking part in outpatient department or routine ward work."

The government has urged doctors to return to duty to treat rising cases of dengue and malaria while it sets up a committee to suggest measures to improve protection for healthcare professionals.

Agencies Via Xinhua