Sans medical service, SCB MCH patients resort to LAMA

CUTTACK: With healthcare services almost paralysed owing to the ongoing cease work protest by junior doctors and house surgeons of SCB medical college and hospital, patients admitted here are leaving the facility against medical advice.

“Leave against medical advice (LAMA) cases have been rising since the strike. Around 400 patients have left the hospital against medical advice in the past seven days,” said a staff of SCB MCH.

He said professors, associate professors and assistant professors too, are failing to attend to the patients properly due to the strike by junior doctors and house surgeons. “If the dharna continues, the situation might worsen in the coming days,” he said.

Sources said though casualty and OPD services are functional, the junior doctors are not going to wards to attend to patients “Earlier, junior doctors used to check on patients and provide necessary treatment but now the senior doctors including professors are visiting the wards twice a day. If condition of a patient deteriorates, there is no one to look after them,” said an attendant of a patient in the medicine ward.

The strike has also affected OPD services. The outdoor of surgery department usually witnesses a footfall of 700 patients but now they have come down to 250 to 300. This apart, dates for conducting surgery are being repeatedly postponed.