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Bihar doctors, chemists leave patients in the lurch

Our Correspondent in Patna

August 23 was the worst day for poor patients in Bihar. While chemists kept their shutters down for the third day in protest against the imposition of turn-over-tax by the state government, doctors too went on a day-long strike protesting against the murder of one of their colleagues by some miscreants in Bhagalpur on August 5.

Those who could not afford private treatment were the worst sufferers. With both doctors and chemists on the warpath, some patients who could have been saved either died or their condition worsened. However, the exact number of those who died due to the agitation could not be ascertained as no official data was made available.

Sixty-year-old Phulia Devi was brought to the Patna Medical College Hospital with serious burn injuries due to a Liquefied Petroleum Gas cylinder blast in Muzaffarpur on August 22. The hospital is about 75 kilometres from Muzaffarpur and has better treatment facilities. However, she was left in lurch as the doctors did not turn up due to the strike. She survived due to the efforts of a handful of junior doctors who did not join the strike.

Like her, there were thousands all over the state who suffered due to the strike by both the chemists and doctors.

The doctors took to street last week following the murder of Dr Shailendra Kumar Singh in Bhagalpur. They charged that despite three doctors being killed in Bihar in the last few months the government was doing nothing to protect them from miscreants and lumpen elements.

They took out a protest rally last week and on Wednesday struck work all over the state.

On the other hand, thirty-five thousand retail chemists, two thousand authorised medical stockists and four thousand wholesalers shut their shutters between August 21 and 23 in protest against the imposition of turn-over-tax by the state government.

The Centre had imposed a uniform eight per cent sales tax on drugs throughout the country. The TOT will make the drugs costlier by three to four per cent. It will also lead to the flooding of medicines in the black market from neighbouring states, which have not imposed any additional tax. Though the state governments are entitled to impose extra tax, till date Bihar is the only state to impose one per cent TOT at every point.

The All India Organisation of Druggists and Chemists has been pressing the Union government to include all taxes within the maximum retail price.

Talking to rediff.com, office-bearers of the Bihar Chamber of Commerce blamed the bureaucracy for the imposition of TOT. Since TOT would bring more medicine through the black market, officials would get an opportunity to earn extra income through corrupt means. Commercial Tax Minister Abdul Bari Siddiqui is not known to favour it.

Talking to newspersons on Tuesday, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Laloo Prasad Yadav said that he would be inviting leaders of the druggists' association to sort out the problem.

Surprisingly, the state government made no alternative arrangement to face the challenge posed by these two strikes and let the people suffer.

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