Lucknow: Fourteen Incharge doctors of Community Health Centres and Primary Health Care centres in Unnao, in Uttar Pradesh resigned for their posts on Wednesday evening.  Both these places are rural hospitals that provide frontline healthcare to villages.

Unnao is just 40 km from Lucknow, where the doctors are in charge of rural hospitals in the district, saying they are being made the scapegoats for the rise in Covid infections in the district. 11 doctors visited the office of Unnao’s Chief Medical Officer on Wednesday evening and handed over the resignation letter to Deputy Chief Medical Officer. The doctors in their letter mentioned that despite working hard in the Covid – 19 pandemic, punitive action and bad behavior is being meted out to doctors without any basis.

The resigned doctors in their letter said the problem is our doctor teams are working round the clock, but it seems we are being marked out for not working. The District Magistrate, other officials, even the SDM and the Tehsildar are all supervising us and holding review meetings.

Our teams leave at noon, track and isolate Covid – 19 positive patients, get sampling done, distribute medicines and then, once we are back, we get calls from SDM asking to come for review meetings. Even if someone is posted 30 km away, he or she is bound to travel all the 30 km for these review meetings. We have to prove that we have worked.

Unnao currently has 1,980 active Covid cases and reported 84 fresh cases and zero new deaths on Wednesday evening.  The same day, multiple bodies were found buried in sand at two locations by the Ganga in the district.

Unnao’s District Magistrate in a fresh statement on Thursday he said things have been sorted out and that the doctors have taken back their resignations.