New Delhi: Healthcare services were severely affected across the country on Monday as doctors wearing helmets and forming human chains went on a strike in solidarity with their protesting colleagues in West Bengal. A large number of patients and their relatives, caught unaware of the strike, were seen waiting outside various hospitals, appealing to authorities for help. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has given the nationwide call to withdraw non-emergency healthcare services after junior doctors in West Bengal went on a strike against a brutal attack on their colleagues by the relatives of a patient who died during treatment. In many government and private hospitals across the country, out-patient departments (OPD) remained closed and scheduled surgeries were postponed. However, emergency services remained operational.

"Those patients or their relatives who take the law into their hands should be strictly dealt with. While we understand the pain of the doctors, is it justified that patients who travel hundreds of kilometres to get treatment at the PGI suffer like this?" asked an elderly patient visiting the OPD at the PGIMER in Chandigarh. Outside a government hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, a patient said, "We left our homes at 3 am and do not know if the doctors will attend to us." The protesting doctors are demanding a comprehensive central legislation to check violence against doctors and other medical professionals at hospitals. They also urged the West Bengal governments to fulfil the demands of the striking doctors and resolve the matter amicably at the earliest. In the national capital, doctors at government and a few private hospitals boycotted work and staged protests.