Now, IMA flags ‘VIP culture, preferential treatment’ at hospitals, tells PM Modi to intervene

The IMA letter urges PM Modi to direct officials to streamline things at hospitals at the earliest and "prevent burnout" of doctors.

A Covid patient looks at his family through a glass barrier at Shehnai Banquet Hall, temporarily converted into an isolation ward near LNJP Hospital in New Delhi on 13 April 2021 | PTI Photo

New Delhi: Raising concerns over what it said a trend of “VIP culture” and “preferential treatment” to politicians and officials when it comes to Covid testing and treatment, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Thursday wrote Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention.

In its letter addressed to PM Modi, the IMA said: “The working doctors are anguished at the undue stress due this VIP culture and preferential treatment for politicians, bureaucrats, party workers etc and decreasing morale of many frontline workers.”

The letter, a copy of which was seen by ThePrint, also said “765 of our doctors” died in the fight against Covid and “they are yet to be recognised as warriors and honoured by the government”.

In the letter signed by IMA national president Dr J.A. Jayalal and honorary secretary-general Dr Jayesh M. Lele, the IMA has urged the PM to “direct officials and streamline this at the earliest and prevent burn out of front line workers”.

‘No separate counter for doctors’

The letter said the IMA is writing to the PM to raise the grievances shared by junior doctors of various colleges under the banner of the Federation of All India Medical Association (FAIMA), an association of doctors, two days ago.

FAIMA had also written to PM Modi expressing concerns about the prevailing “VIP culture” in government hospitals amid the prevailing wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

In its letter dated 13 April, the association noted that there are separate VIP counters at several Centre-run government hospitals that offer Covid testing only to politicians and ministers.

“But doctors have no separate counter for testing,” it said.

The IMA’s Thursday letter reiterated that the “VIP counters for testing in hospitals were being used by personal contacts of politicians” even as doctors have no separate counter for testing.

It also raised concerns over no separate enclosure, no beds or ICU ward for doctors who have to stand in queues despite being frontline workers. “Yet, priority is being given to VIPs,” the letter read.