Wanted: A doctor to nurse Bihar’s woes

For the last 24 hours, 17-year-old Sarita — who was burnt from head to foot in a cooking gas explosion in Ara near here — has been...

For the last 24 hours, 17-year-old Sarita — who was burnt from head to foot in a cooking gas explosion in Ara near here — has been lying unattended in the emergency ward of the Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH).

Sarita is just one of the many who are battling for their lives in Bihar hospitals as the strike by doctors — demanding immediate release of Dr Bharat Singh of PMCH, released late on Thursday — entered the second day today.

Finally, BJP gets a chance to give it back to Cong

NEW DELHI: Long used to its allies being ridiculed by the Congress for their failure to take a decisive stand on controversial issues, the BJP turned around on Friday and asked the Congress to explain why it was sustaining a ‘‘jungle, zalim and joker raj’’ in Bihar.

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BJP general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the brutal killing of an Army jawan in a fake encounter, the daylight murders of three students by the police and the kidnapping of a doctor — all speak of the state of affairs in Bihar.

‘‘The Congress is using RJD leader Laloo Prasad Yadav for ‘entertainment’ purposes, but it’s the people of Bihar who are paying the ‘entertainment tax’,’’ he noted. (ENS)

Sarita’s mother Amina doesn’t know what to do. ‘‘Please help us,’’ she tells anyone who passes by. The scene at the hospital is gory — just hours back, a man lying in the adjacent bed died from an unattended head injury.

Five people have died in Sarita’s ward since the strike started. Next door in the children’s ward, four children have died unattended.

Other wards looked deserted with most patients leaving to find treatment elsewhere. Only the serious patients and those who couldn’t afford to go anywhere else remained at the hospital.

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All medical services remained paralysed today as doctors all over the state went on strike with hospitals, nursing homes and private clinics remaining largely shut. Doctors at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) and Nalanda Medical College also remained shut.

The Bihar Chapter of IMA, which had earlier decided to extend the strike. But after Dr Bhagat Singh’s release, it has withdrawn the strike, saying doctors will resume duty from tomorrow by 7.30 am.

‘‘The state government should have set up some alternative emergency facilities but they didn’t do so,’’ said lawyer Dinesh Kumar Singh, Dr Bharat Singh’s friend.

Opposition NDA has demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Rabri Devi for her ‘‘abject failure’’ to check the states ‘‘spiralling crime graph’’.