Dukhiya Devi, 75, (left) of Nawada was left unattended on Thursday for two hours at the emergency wing of PMCH. Picture by Ashok Sinha

Komal Devi (24), a patient with 90 per cent burn injuries admitted in the emergency wing of Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), kept on writhing in pain till around 2.30pm but did not get necessary medical attention. Devi’s mother kept on pleading to the nurses to take care of Devi as no doctor came to check her.

Mogal Choudhary (55), an accident victim, also admitted in the PMCH emergency wing, had a similar experience on Thursday. Choudhary, whose left leg was severely injured in an accident, was lying in a semi-conscious state in the PMCH emergency wing bed since 5.30am but no doctor had come to check him till around 2pm.

Patients admitted in the emergency and other wings of PMCH on Thursday bore the brunt of the junior doctors’ strike before it was lifted late in the evening.

Around 600 junior doctors (postgraduate students) of PMCH went on strike in the morning citing police’s failure to find one Kumar Vijay Krishna, missing since October 19. Vijay was a student of doctor of medicine (MD) in the physiology department. His motorcycle had been recovered from Gandhi Setu the same day.

PMCH principal S.K. Sinha spoke with members of the Junior Doctors’ Association (JDA) in the morning but it proved to be futile. Sinha said: “The police are going to hold a news meet on the matter this (Thursday) evening. They might have come across some clues.”

Late in the evening, JDA withdrew their strike citing satisfaction at the setting up of a separate police team to probe into Vijay’s disappearance.

Patients had a harrowing time owing to the strike the entire day. While some claimed they were left unattended, some others said senior doctors did the rounds of the wards once or twice.

Sunil, nephew of Mogal Choudhary, a patient admitted in the emergency wing, said: “No doctor has come to see my uncle since we admitted him here around 5.30am today (Thursday). People manning the control room of the hospital said the doctor supposed to check on my uncle is busy in the operation theatre. Had there been no strike today, the junior doctors would have been available to us.” Guddu Kumar, brother of 12-year-old Sunita Kumari, who was admitted to the paediatrics department, said: “Sunita developed breathing problems in the afternoon. We are neither getting any senior doctor nor any junior,” said Guddu.

PMCH officials claimed that the number of patients coming to the outpatient and emergency wings of the hospital dipped marginally on Thursday.

Alok Kumar, the health manager of the hospital, said: “Today (Thursday), around 1,065 patients turned up at the outpatient department against 1,500 patients on normal days and 239 patients had come to the emergency ward till 3pm against around 350 patients on other days.”

Police said teams had gone to Muzaffarpur and Begusarai districts to look for one Rajkumar, a contractor, named as accused by the victim’s family. Later, the officers said the man was in Delhi and would return to Patna soon. The CID is also working on the case.