Before Kolkata doctor rape, an unmet promise to keep physicians safe

KOLKATA — Five years ago, the government of West Bengal state in India pledged to clamp down on violence against doctors. It promised public hospitals better security equipment, female guards to support female physicians and controlled entry points, according to an internal government memo seen by Reuters.

None of these measures had been implemented at the public hospital where a young female doctor was sexually assaulted and killed on Aug 9, allegedly by a police volunteer, four trainee doctors there told Reuters.

Instead, in the days leading up to the homicide-assault, which prompted nationwide outrage and a doctors strike, only two male guards manned R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, they said. They were supplemented by a few closed circuit cameras that did not comprehensively cover the sprawling premises, according to the trainees.

One of the doors of the lecture hall where the doctor had been resting during a 36-hour shift when she was attacked had no lock, said two other trainee doctors who had also slept there. The air conditioning in the designated break room had malfunctioned, they said.

After two doctors at a different hospital were assaulted by a patient's relatives in 2019, West Bengal had promised to install "effective security equipment and systems," regulate entry and exit to hospital premises and create a compensation policy for assaulted staff, according to the state health department memo dated June 17, 2019.

The two-page document, which is reported by Reuters for the first time, was prepared after chief minister Mamata Banerjee met that day with trainee doctors protesting the attack on their colleagues as a "record note" of the interaction. The memo did not state to whom it was addressed.

Baner