Intern doctors of Bogra Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College (SZMC) Hospital have enforced an indefinite strike protesting disciplinary action taken against four colleagues for assaulting a patient's relatives.
The strike is causing the patients immense suffering as only government employed doctors are serving at the wards.
The four interns are also members of SZMC unit of Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL).
Sources at the SZMC Hospital said, on February 19, four interns of the Medicine Department beat up and abused the relatives of a patient.
Following media reports on that incident, the authorities launched a probe into the matter.
On Thursday afternoon, the authorities made public their decision to suspend the four interns – MA Al Mamun, Ashikuzzaman Ashik, Kutub Uddin and Nurjahan Binte Islam – for six months in connection with the incident.
Infuriated by the decision, 130 interns of the hospital went on an indefinite strike on Thursday afternoon.
Assistant Director of Bogra SZMC Hospital Dr Nirmalendu Chowdhury, also the head of the probe body, said some of the interns had not shown up for their work shifts on Thursday night.
They had been enforcing an unannounced strike since Friday morning, he added
Hospital authorities have called a meeting on Saturday morning to discuss this issue.
