Controversy erupts over Bengal CM’s meeting with doctors today

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee convened a meeting with 675 senior and junior doctors from across the state on Monday, 24 February.

The gathering has sparked controversy due to concerns that the mandated attendance of such a large number of medical professionals could adversely affect patient care in their respective hospitals and clinics.

Critics argue that with so many doctors being required to attend the meeting, healthcare services in different districts could suffer, potentially leading to delays in treatment and affecting patient well-being.

In the said meeting, which has been described as a “doctors’ convention” and christened as “Chiskitsar Ar Ek Nam Seba (Medical Services is Human Service)”, junior and senior doctors from different state-run medical colleges and hospitals are scheduled to attend.

In the state health department notification about the said convention, the chief medical officers of health (CMOH)s of different districts have been asked to nominate “faculties, students, resident doctors and medical officers” under their restrictive controls for attending the said convention.

In the notification issued by the West Bengal health secretary Narayan Swarup Nigam, he had advised the CMOHs to nominate representatives but only after ensuring that the patient care services for the patients coming to the health outfits concerned are not affected.

However, questions have started surfacing on how the normal patient care services in the state, especially at the districts, would continue to function as usual with as many as 675 representatives, many from the district, attending the convention scheduled at a state-run auditorium in Kolkata and stating from the 11.30 am.

Concerns are being raised about how normal patient care services—especially in district hospitals—will continue to function smoothly, given that 675 doctors, including many from outside Kolkata, are required to attend the meeting.

According to leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the state Assembly Suvendu Adhikari, the state health secretary as well as the chief secretary Manoj Pant should clarify how patient care services would not be affected when as many as 675 doctors on active medical services have been directed to attend the said convention.

Adhikari has also questioned the justification of directing so many doctors at a purported convention, where according to him; the Chief Minister will deliver a “political speech”.

The LoP had also questioned whether the said convention is basically a show of the state government's authority on doctors under its payroll, especially, in the backdrop of the statewide movement on the ghastly rape and murder of a woman doctor of the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata within the hospital premises in 2024.

Adhikari has also pointed out that during the movement the protesting doctors had also been vocal on the reported laxities in the healthcare system of the state.

With IANS inputs