SURAT, June 18: ``One labourer was lying on a stretcher. It was a case of acute inside haemorrhage. His mouth was full of blood, his eyes blood red. He was dying,'' a junior doctor who stayed away in protest from New Civil Hospital and Surat Medical College recalled on Tuesday.

He was one of the doctors who had struck work to press for withdrawal of laboratory fees effected by the South Gujarat University. ``I could have offered him help, but had no choice. It was a question of unity. I could not possibly attend to the patient and overlook our strike.''

Three patients died and hundreds of other patients had a trying time even as senior teachers tried their best to make up for their juniors. The hospital authorities had deputed teachers from government medical colleges in place of junior doctors and interns.

The seriousness of the strike is yet to sink in even as the administration contests the junior doctors' claim of three deaths on Monday. Medical superintendent B V Subrahmanyam says, ``They would have died anyway even if junior doctors were around.''

The lists submitted by hospital authorities and the JDA have only one name in common. President Pritu Dhalaria claims 16-year-old Yogesh Gambhir, a resident of Dhamodigam village of Songadh taluka; Rajubhai Bhagwandas, a resident of Naroli village of neighbouring Valsad district; and an unidentified man from the Orthopaedic department died as they could not be treated in time. Subrahmanyam says, ``They were all serious cases.'' While junior doctors are trying to exaggerate the impact of the strike, hospitals authorities, expectedly, are playing it down. The striking doctors claim that hospital work would be paralysed in their absence and it would be impossible for teachers, who are not used to doing routine work, to function on their own. Dhalaria says teachers of non-clinical subjects like pathology, biochemistry, and physiotherapy were asked to something they were not familiar with.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.