Doctors must not forget the noble call of their profession

When medical professionals including doctors, nurses and other medical staffs go for work abstention to press home their demand, serious or not, putting lives of patients at risk and hampering regular treatment to patients at hospitals and health centres, their commitment to their noble profession comes seriously into question.
The medical professionals’ grievances could be serious, but that does not mean that an innocent patient’s life would be taken hostage, whom a doctor is especially oath-bound to serve. But in our rather bizarre society, we quite often hear that doctors or nurses go on a strike as they did in Khulna on a 24-hour work abstention from 6:00am on Wednesday to 6:00am on Thursday when treatment was denied to innumerable patients of Khulna General Hospitals and nine Upazila Health Complexes as well as other private hospitals in the district. This they did to protest the attack on a fellow physician.
When a doctor is physically assaulted, or feels aggrieved in any other way, our normal expectation is the matter should be quickly handled by the law enforcing agency and the relevant authorities. This expectation is not just about people who are involved in the medical profession, but in every crime in society, medical or not. This should be the norm and practice in any civilised society.
But our human conscience is shaken when we notice the whole medical community goes for work abstention for an incident related to a particular one or few individuals. This is really an insanity of sorts when the group power is abused in this way for a single stray incident in Bangladesh. And quite often this power abuse is done.
What was the demand of the striking doctors in Khulna by the way? It is the arrest of the attackers as was read out by Bangladesh Medical Association Khulna Unit through a written statement. The normal course of action in such a case is that the victim would lodge a case of complaint to police who are obliged to take action that is legally permitted.
No, we are not against assertion of group power by a community, but our advice is when the group power involves the medical community, the people in the community must think twice before taking any drastic action such as work abstention. The call of their profession does not attest to this kind of mindless thing.