As many as 14 government doctors in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh have stepped down from their posts, complaining about excessive review meetings and bad behaviour in the wake of a surge in Covid-19 infections.
All these doctors were in-charge of Community Health Centres and Primary Healthcare Centres in the district, located around 40 km away from state capital Lucknow, NDTV reported. These centres have been catering to the villagers for Covid-19 treatment.
Of the 14 doctors, 11 signed on a joint resignation letter and visited the office of Unnao’s chief medical officer on Wednesday evening to hand it over to his deputy.
The doctors claimed in the letter that despite slogging hard during the ongoing pandemic, they’re being subjected to punitive action.
Dr Sharad Vaishya, one of the signatories to the resignation letter, said their teams are working round the clock, “but it seems we are being marked out for ‘not working’”.
The doctor said the DM, other officials, even the SDM and the tehsildar are all supervising them and holding review meetings.
Their teams leave at noon, track and isolate Covid-19 positive patients, get their sampling done, distribute medicines and then later they get calls from SDM to attend review meetings, he added.
“Even if someone is posted 30 km away, he or she is bound to travel all the 30 km for these review meetings,” he said, adding that they “have to prove that we have worked”.
“It seems it is being suggested that because we are not working, the Covid infection is spreading,” he said.
‘We will get over this’
However, district magistrate Ravindra Kumar said the matter would be resolved soon.
Kumar added they are talking to the doctors and that the chief minister’s office has also spoken to them.
“We will find a solution to the problem. They are part of our team. They are not strangers. We will get over this,” he told the media in a statement on Wednesday.
Unnao at present has 1,980 active cases. The district reported 84 fresh cases and zero new deaths on Wednesday evening. However, multiple bodies were found buried in sand at two locations by the Ganga in the district the same day.
In the last 24 hours, Uttar Pradesh recorded 18,023 new cases and 326 deaths. The state is the fourth worst-hit region by Covid-19 in India.
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