Health Minister Umakanta Chaudhary on Tuesday evening met Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who is also the chancellor of the National Academy of Medical Sciences (NAMS), to discuss ways to resolve the crisis.
“We will now initiate legal procedure to resolve the crisis,” Minister Chaudhary said. Chaudhary had on Saturday called Vice-Chancellor (VC) of NAMS Dr CP Maskey, Registrar Dr Bishwa Raj Joshi and Rector Dr Shree Krishna Giri at the ministry and issued a two-day ultimatum to resolve the issue. But far from resolving the issue, even registrars and consultants joined the residents´ strike from Tuesday limiting the country´s largest and oldest hospital to providing basic health care through a few medical officers at the emergency ward.
Minister Chaudhary had on Tuesday afternoon summoned NAMS officials at the ministry to discuss the issue but the management, which had issued a notice at the hospital on Monday stating that all the demands of RAN had been met, insisted that the situation was ´normal´.
“Dr Maskey was defiant and said that nothing could be done as the demands had already been met,” secretary at the ministry Dr Praveen Mishra said, adding, “Registrar Joshi, however, acknowledged that the situation had turned serious and offered his resignation to provide an opening. But others refused to budge.”
Dr Maskey and others then abruptly left the meeting, who then decided to fire Director of Bir Hospital Dr Dirgharaj RC and seek consent of the prime minister to deal with the NAMS officials. “They had 13 days to resolve the crisis and we even gave them a two-day ultimatum but they could do nothing. We will now start the legal process, starting with seeking clarification from the NAMS management, from Wednesday,” Dr Mishra added.
The Residents´ Association of NAMS (RAN) had staged protests in late August demanding raise in monthly stipend, more duty rooms and upgradation of duty rooms, provision of drinking water, provision of night duty allowance, residential quarters, provision of equipment like portable x-ray, ECG and pulse oximetry, availability of emergency medicines and round-the-clock provision of ultrasound facility for the benefit of patients, among others.
The management had reached agreement with RAN on August 31 to meet all the demands except the residential quarters, addressing of which required time. But RAN issuing a statement on Tuesday claimed that none of the demands had been met.
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