Doctor Raped and Killed on Duty, Thousands of Indian Health Workers Go on Nationwide Strike

NEW DELHI – Hundreds of thousands of health workers India and their supporters have launched a nationwide strike to protest the rape and murder of an intern doctor last week at a government hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Many of the protests on Saturday (17/8/2024) were led by doctors and other health workers, and were joined by tens of thousands of other Indian citizens demanding action.

Hospitals and clinics across India turned away patients, except for emergency cases, on Saturday as medical professionals began a 24-hour lockdown at 6am. The faculty of medical colleges had to serve in an emergency.

“We want justice,” shouted the protesters, as they gathered in Kolkata to demand better working conditions and care not only for health workers, but also for women in general.

“The hand that heals cannot bleed,” read one of the handwritten signs, Al Jazeera reported.

The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s blood-covered body on August 9 at the state’s RG Kar Hospital and Medical College sparked violent protests in several cities across the country.

“We don’t feel safe,” Antara Das, a medical student who joined the protest in Kolkata, told Al Jazeera. “If this happened inside the hospital which is our second home, where are we safe now?”

The murdered doctor was found in the seminar hall of the teaching hospital where he had been working for 36 hours. An autopsy confirmed sexual assault.

The Indian Medical Association (IMA), the country’s largest medical body with 400,000 members, condemned “crimes on a barbaric scale and lack of safe spaces for women”, adding in a statement that both the association medical and the country itself are “victims”.