Thursday July 10, 2008 KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) - Striking doctors in Nepal shut down all the hospitals and clinics in the Himalayan nation Thursday, demanding better government protection against attacks by angry relatives of patients who have died.
Doctors had shut down hospitals in the capital, Katmandu, on Wednesday and expanded the strike to the rest of the country on Thursday.
Emergency services remained open.
Doctors groups say there have been several incidents over the past year in which people attacked or threatened hospitals and doctors over allegations of negligence in their relatives' deaths.
Dr. Kedar Narsingh of the Nepal Medical Association said the strike would continue until the government responds to their demands.
"The government has not even bothered to call us for talks and has not taken us seriously,'' he said.
"We will continue our protest until the government responds positively.''
In the latest incident, the family of a patient who died after kidney surgery threatened doctors at a hospital in Katmandu over the weekend.
Narsingh said the government had promised better security at hospitals two years ago after a similar incident led to a doctors' strike, but little has been done.
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what is the world coming to?
pray that malaysians takkan la sampai macam tu sekali..
but everyday at work seems like we're heading towards that direction. parents claiming we're treating their ill kids as pincushion la, experiment la, .. asyik cucuk saja ambik darah..
hya..if there is any other way for us to take blood from your children, less invasively, like picit kuku and darah terus keluar dari hidung ke.. or press the nose and blood comes out of the bellybutton ke.. dont u think we would take blood that way?
do you think we would just go to the ward at 3am in the morning, and since there's nuthin else to do, we play "let's prick the children and drain their blood away" for fun?
contrary to some beliefs.. we dont drink children's blood.. nor do we find anything useful to do with their urine or feces either, that we would ask you for the samples, or on occasions we ourselves have to stick a tube up their urethra (a.k.a the pee-hole), other than to have them sent to the labs so we could try and figure out why the heck is your child so sick, and try our best to make them better, cuz umm... isnt it why you brought them to us in the 1st place?
this may not have any medical explainations to it.. but from the (still very)limited experience of working with sick kids and babies for >6 years now, i find that babies whose parents are so calm, understanding, supportive and most of all very cooperative with us while we're treating their child.. these kids turnout well, despite our so-called medical opinion that they were so ill that they may not make it through..these are the kids who not only survive..they survive well, and grow healthily & beautifully.. passing way beyond all of our previous grave expectations.
but those babies whose parents are so inconsiderate, rude, accusing, overly paranoid etc (basically plain bad lah).. their babies seem to just give up on life.. even if their illness are not that serious, in our so-called medical opinion "should be okay one"... these are the kids that decide to turn for the worse..
sigh...
we remind ourselves..at least i make sure i do... to treat the patients..not the parents.. it's not the babies' fault that he/she were born to rude, stoopid moronic parents.
contrary to popular beliefs, doctors are humans.. with feelings.. we too feel sad, depressed even sometimes, when we couldnt save a child. how can people accuse us of "saja2 biar budak mati" is just beyond me.
i dont normally cry in front of parents when i deliver them the bad news, however sad i was feeling at the time... but i remember on one occasion not that long ago, after telling a couple that their child had died (after staying with us for a longtime in the NICU), they both nodded sadly, there was a pause, i stayed with them all ready to console them, my hand on the mom's shoulders.. then both of them surprised me by saying "thank you doctor, we know you have tried your best, and we appreciate everything that you and your team-the doctors, nurses, have done for our baby. only God can pay you all in return"
and there was no stopping the tears that rolled down my cheeks..
arrghh..