Now, IMA flags ‘VIP culture, preferential treatment’ at hospitals, tells PM Modi to intervene
Raising concerns over what it said a trend of “VIP culture” and “preferential treatment” to politicians and officials when it comes to Covid testing and treatment, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Thursday wrote Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention.
In its letter addressed to PM Modi, the IMA said: “The working doctors are anguished at the undue stress due this VIP culture and preferential treatment for politicians, bureaucrats, party workers etc and decreasing morale of many frontline workers.”
Raising concerns over what it said a trend of “VIP culture” and “preferential treatment” to politicians and officials when it comes to Covid testing and treatment, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Thursday wrote Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention.
In its letter addressed to PM Modi, the IMA said: “The working doctors are anguished at the undue stress due this VIP culture and preferential treatment for politicians, bureaucrats, party workers etc and decreasing morale of many frontline workers.”
The letter said the IMA is writing to the PM to raise the grievances shared by junior doctors of various colleges under the banner of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), an association of doctors, two days ago.
FAIMA had also written to PM Modi expressing concerns about the prevailing “VIP culture” in government hospitals amid the prevailing wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.
In its letter dated 13 April, the association noted that there are separate VIP counters at several Centre-run government hospitals that offer Covid testing only to politicians and ministers.
“But doctors have no separate counter for testing,” it said.
The IMA’s Thursday letter reiterated that the “VIP counters for testing in hospitals were being used by personal contacts of politicians” even as doctors have no separate counter for testing.
It also raised concerns over no separate enclosure, no beds or ICU ward for doctors who have to stand in queues despite being frontline workers. “Yet, priority is being given to VIPs,” the letter read.
