Agencies
New Delhi
Doctors in India have begun a national strike, escalating the protest against the abuse and murder of a female colleague in the West Bengal city of Kolkata.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest grouping of doctors, said all non-essential hospital services would be shut down across the country on Saturday.
The IMA described last week’s killing as a “crime of barbaric scale due to the lack of safe spaces for women” and asked for the country’s support in its “struggle for justice”. Protests against the attack and calling for the better protection of women have intensified in recent days after a mob vandalised the hospital where it happened.
In a statement, the IMA said emergency and casualty services would continue to run and that the strike would last for 24 hours. The association’s president, RV Asokan said doctors have been suffering and protesting against violence for years, but that this incident was “qualitatively different”.
If such a crime can happen in a medical college in a major city, it shows “everywhere doctors are unsafe”, he said.
