Watch doctors and nurses describe their ordeal: This is how we treat them

Federation of Resident Doctors’ Association of India wrote to the Prime Minister on Thursday, demanding a central legislation to make assault of medical professionals a non-bailable offence. The letter followed the assault of two Resident Doctors working in AIIMS, Bhopal.

In a video clip Dr Ritu described how the police stopped her and a colleague when they were returning to their quarters after Emergency Duty in the hospital. Although they explained to the policemen that they were doctors and produced their ID cards as proof, the policemen were not appeased. Doctors, they said, were spreading the coronavirus in society and should stay indoors. They also rained blows on them with their lathi, injuring them.

Several instances have been reported of landlords throwing out doctor tenants and people abusing and assaulting medical professionals. In an interview to veteran TV journalist and editor Barkha Dutt, Dr Sanjibani Panigrahi from Surat described how a neighbour abused and assaulted her in front of her three-year-old son.

In Telangana, Dr Sudhakar, who spoke up against shortages of mask and gloves at the Narsipatnam Government Hospital was placed under suspension.

Nurses in Delhi complained that they were not being given proper accommodation for quarantine. Authorities, they said, had asked them to use their homes to quarantine themselves. With most of them living in two-room quarters with family and children, quarantining themselves at home would endanger their own lives and also could infect family members, they pointed out.

Meanwhile, doctors, nurses and other medical professionals at the frontline of the battle against COVID-19, continue with their heroic work. Eight British doctors serving the National Health Service, all of them immigrants from India, Pakistan, Egypt and other countries, have succumbed to the disease, heightening the sense of insecurity among medical professionals.

Few arrangements have been made till now to accommodate doctors, nurses and other para-medics treating COVID-19 patients, in the hospital itself. Most of them are going back home and inviting panic reactions from people in the locality. The Assam Government, however, claimed that doctors were being sent on a compulsory 14-day quarantine to hotels after treating patients for a week.

The pressure under which they are working is clearly borne out by the young lady in this clip: