Amid assaults on doctors and paramedical staff and vandalizing hospitals in the Valley by forces and miscreants, medicos, who are performing extra-ordinary duties in the ongoing unrest, have warned the authorities to ensure their safety or they will stop working in such circumstances.Doctors and JK Nursing Association Saturday expressed anger over the attacks on medical staff and barging of forces into hospitals in the Valley.
These associations said that while unknown miscreants are harassing them when they travel towards their homes or hospitals, forces, particularly CRPF men deployed on roads and streets assault them.However, the CRPF denies having carried any such assaults on medical staff or hospitals.
Minister of Health and Medical Education did not answer despite repeated calls to him.“The attacks or harassment by some miscreants and security personnel across various hospital premises is condemnable. Barbaric Assaults and spreading a reign of terror at SDH Chadoora, SDH Khansahib and Trauma Hospital Kangan is deplorable and dismal and beyond words to express as how it has affected the psyche of medical staff,” said Doctors Association Kashmir, headed by Dr G M Mir.“The association is going to put forward to Director Health Services Kashmir and Secretary Health & Medical Education Department,” it said.
On Friday, Valley’s tertiary care hospital, SMHS, which has seen huge rush of patients injured in pellet firing and in clashes in the ongoing unrest, witnessed mayhem when CRPF fired teargas shells into its premises when some people offered funeral prayers of a youth, Sameer Ahmad Wani of Khansahab Budgam, who was brought dead to the hospital.The medical staff and attendants were gripped in fear due to shelling into the hospital premises.“I called my father at home and asked him that I won’t reach alive home tomorrow.
The hospital on Casualty side was simmering with tear some shells which the CRPF were firing,” a young nurse at Casualty ward of the SMHS told KNS.She narrated that she had gone to get few chilled water bottles from a shop near on the Casualty side of the hospital. “But I saw CRPF going berserk and firing teargas shells towards the hospital,” she said.Another DAK association said that unruly incidents of teargas shelling at SMHS Hospital have demoralised and frightened the staff there. “In no way these savage acts can be justified by anyone at the helm of affairs,” its president Dr Nisar Ul Hassan said.
“We appeal CRPF and police not to harass us,” Javaid Ahmad, General Secretary of JK Nursing Association told KNS.However, PRO CRPF, Rajesh Yadav, denied that the central forces having carried out any assault on medical staff or hospitals.“There is nothing of such sort. Everybody is moving around at the time when our personnel are deployed. We are not checking or stopping ay vehicle when it moves. Ambulances and medical staff move freely while we are deployed,” Yadav told KNS.When asked about CRPF firing tear smoke shells in SMHS premises, he said: “We don’t have any deployment near SMHS. A police station is located near the hospital. Nobody will fire tear smoke shells inside the hospital. We have clear directions to show maximum restraint”.Dr Nisar added: “There is no excuse for deliberately targeting hospital after hospital. The latest string of attacks on medical facilities appears to be part of a pattern to target medics and hospitals.” (KNS)