Bengaluru: Kin of Covid patient who died on ventilator support assault doctor

Bengaluru: Family of a patient who succumbed to Covid-19 assaulted a doctor from a private hospital in Bengaluru.

Sources said that it was on Saturday afternoon that the chief consultant from the medical intensive care unit (ICU) was assaulted by family members of a Covid patient who was on ventilator for over 35 days. The patient was admitted through government quota and was not in good condition. Though the progress which wasn’t good was communicated on a daily basis, the doctor was assaulted.

Reportedly, the doctor was verbally abused too and a mobile phone was thrown at him, but the face shield that he was wearing protected him from major injuries.

The person who assaulted the doctor was then locked in a room and an FIR was filed at Puttenahalli police station. A senior police officer said, “We have filed an FIR and legal action will be taken against the accused on the same.”

“#violenceagainstdoctors A respected senior intensivist of a reputed tertiary hospital in Bangalore was assaulted today by relatives of patient who succumbed to Covid”, tweeted Dr Somalaram Venkatesh, chief of Cardiology department at Aster RV Hospital.

This doctor had worked through both the wave of the pandemic and had saved the lives of many people.

In the meantime, such assaults have been reported and it is alleged that the government has done nothing about it yet.

Recently, the Karnataka Association of Resident Doctors wrote a letter to the CM BS Yediyurappa in which they mentioned about 12 cases of assaults on doctors from the past 8-10 months which have gone unnoticed. They demanded the formation of a state-level legal cell to fight such cases of assault healthcare workers. Lately, a paediatric doctor was injured in an attack by four men in Chikkamaguluru on May 31 in Tarikere.