The 50-day junior doctors' strike has claimed a heavy price , with as many as 24 deaths that occurred between Friday night and Saturday morning across the state ,being attributed to the paralysed emergency services at staterun hospitals . Seventeen deaths were reported from three tertiary care hospitals in Hyderabad __ six each from Gandhi and Osmania General Hospital (OGH) and of five new-born babies at Niloufer Hospital .
Five deaths were reportedin Kurnool .Visakhapatnam and Bhadrachalam accounted for one each . However , state health authorities , as expected , termed the deaths as routine' and said they were no way related to doctors' boycott of emergency duties.
There were heart-rending scenes of patients suffering in front of emergency wards at government hospitals as doctors stayed away from emergency duties even as patients , most of them poor , were being turned away to private facilities . Chaotic scenes were witnessed at the casualty wards andintensivecareunitsofvarious departments at the hospitals in Visakhapatnam , Vijayawada , Guntur , Kakinada , Tirupati , Anantapur , Kurnool and Warangal . Vital casualty wards , intensive care units of various departments , in-patient and outpatient wards at all the teaching hospitals were badly hit due to the strike . Victims of accidents and burns were the worst hit with no doctor available in the emergency wing .
Pavan Singh , a Dhoolpet resident was at OGH trying to find a doctor for his relative . "We were referred from the Chest Hospital . My brother-inlaw developed severe swelling on his left leg and had other complications . He was unable to walk . We brought him in an ambulance to the hospital but were told that doctors had left for theday ."
Also at OGH was a 12-member group that had met with an accident near Mahbubnagar while returning from Tirupati . Thevictimswithbleedinginjurieswere rushedtoOGHon Saturday afternoon . Of the 12, an old couple, Narsamma and Narsi Reddy , were lying on stretchersoutsidethecasualty .
