Mumbai: On Day 2 of the strike called by resident doctors in Maharashtra over allowing homeopaths to practise modern medicine based on a one-year certificate course, multiple services in govt hospitals were crippled on Wednesday. The national-level Indian Medical Association (IMA) entered the fray, warning the state govt that if the move is not rolled back, there will be a pan-India strike of doctors and medical students.With 12,000 junior doctors on strike, including over 2,000 at the four BMC-run medical colleges in the city, routine outpatient and inpatient services, elective surgeries and central laboratory services were among those suspended. Patients with no severities were turned away at many hospitals. Similar disruptions were reported across the state.At the time of going to press, Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) said the strike will now be indefinite and will include withdrawal of all routine clinical, academic and non-critical emergency services until further notice. At govt hospitals, these services are managed entirely by resident doctors and their withdrawal would mean severe disruptions.Medical education secretary Dheeraj Kumar asked the state IMA to withdraw the strike, but it refused.No additional homeopaths were registered during the day by Maharashtra Medical Council since Neha Pawar’s enlistment on Tuesday.As the strike intensified, govt hospitals across the state asked professors and senior resident doctors with some interns to attend to OPD calls.OPD numbers at state-run JJ Hospital fell by 23% till noon, from a daily average of 1,735 to 1,333. Patient admissions dropped significantly—from 102 on average daily to just 12. At least 10 elective surgeries by the hospital’s general surgery department were postponed. As opposed to its daily average of 39, the hospital just performed four major procedures. Similar disruptions were seen at the four BMC-run medical colleges.A doctor from JJ Hospital’s surgery department said some residents still attended to patients on compassionate grounds. “We do not want patients to suffer. Many of them come from far away. We are requesting govt to not push us further.”An intern at the facility’s medicine department said there was just one resident doctor on call for severe cases. “The unit is usually packed with a few resident doctors and interns.”Even the pulmonary department, which caters to a large number of TB patients, faced disruptions as no resident was there to look after the pulmonary function test.MARD president Dr Atharva Shinde said, “If the doctors do not strike now, human lives and patient safety in the long run would be impacted as more and more unqualified individuals would prescribe medicines haphazardly.”Elsewhere in the state, outpatient services were badly affected, including at Govt Medical College and Hospital and Indira Gandhi Govt Medical College and Hospital in Nagpur. The response from Pune’s doctors and hospitals was mixed—while OPDs and elective procedures were affected in some hospitals, they remained operational as usual in others.The private medical sector, which has many state IMA members, was largely unaffected by the strike call.While warning of a pan-India strike in a letter to CM Devendra Fadnavis, IMA’s national unit flagged that dual medical council registration is unprecedented and not allowed anywhere in India. “It is neither well thought out nor justified. There are no guidelines or SOPs laid out for the same. It also creates misinformation among the general public about the qualifications and capabilities of the doctor in treating their ailments,” said the letter. (With additional reporting from Nagpur and Pune)Nod given only on Aug 4, but giving out modern meds since 2017Chembur-based homeopath Neha Pawar became eligible to prescribe modern medicines only on Tuesday, but she disclosed to TOI that she has been prescribing allopathic drugs since 2017.She completed her one-year certificate course in modern pharmacology in 2022.Operating out of a clinic in Mankhurd, which sees high rates of infectious diseases, Pawar said she routinely provides medical services for complex conditions such as TB and even Guillain-Barré Syndrome. “No problem has happened till now. Even my patients have no issues with me being a homeopath.”Bahubali Shah, administrator of the homeopathic council, said on Tuesday homeopaths and other practitioners of alternative forms of medicines have been prescribing modern medicines to patients for years. IMA member Dr Jayesh Lele said the association has been opposing such quackery through “mixopathy”.
