Students of North Bengal Dental College & Hospital (NBDCH) have launched a protest under the banner of Trinamul Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) since Tuesday, alleging lack of facilities and negligence on the part of the authorities.
The junior doctors at the hospital, located in Sushrutanagar on the outskirts of Siliguri, have also joined the students in the demonstration.
“A section of faculty members are irregular in conducting classes. Such irregularity is affecting our studies. There is a crisis of various materials which we need for practical classes and those available are of inferior quality. Also, the authorities are ignorant of the college premises and there is dirt and filth everywhere. We have to attend classes in an unhygienic environment. These issues have to be addressed,” said one of the demonstrators.
The junior doctors, who observed a symbolic hunger strike at the college on Tuesday, said the dental college lacks a prominent operation theatre.
“We are disappointed with the lackadaisical attitude of the authorities and doubt their sincerity in running this college and hospital. The Orthopantomogram (OPG), which is an important equipment used to scan dental x-rays, is lying unused and has not been made functional so far. This is depriving the patients. Also, the auditorium that was built long back has not been opened yet,” said Pushpendu Sarkar, president of the NBDCH unit of house staff that is affiliated to the TMCP.
Their movement, he said, will continue unless the demands are met.
Sanjay Dutta, the NBDCH principal, said they were looking into the issues. “Some faculty members could not attend classes because of certain problems. Also, materials for practical classes are supplied regularly despite a fund crunch.”
The local panchayat under which the NBDCH is located has been asked to clean the college premises on a regular basis, Dutta added.
Varsity conference
A three-day international conference on “Mechanistic & Therapeutic Approaches in Human & Animal Health,” which was organised by the zoology department of Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University (CBPBU), concluded at the varsity on Wednesday.
Several aspects like the mechanism of disease pathogenesis of infectious diseases, including SARS CoV-2, HIV and parasitic diseases, drug synthesis and metabolism in inflammatory and stress related disorders, cancer and stem cell therapy, vaccination strategies and efficacy and use of bioinformatics in vaccine development, were highlighted at the.
Additional reporting by our Cooch Behar correspondent
