On the first day of ban on movement of civilian traffic on the Baramulla-Srinagar-Jammu highway, scores of patients Sunday faced immense difficulties in reaching their respective health facilities in the Valley. Doctors from different Srinagar hospitals who talked to Greater Kashmir said they came across patients who had to face tremendous problems due to the traffic ban and reached the hospitals late.
“We received a sick child whose father had carried him inarms many kilometers by foot before he had got a lift up to the hospital,” adoctor at GB Pant hospital said.
There were scores of patients who couldn’t make it to thehospitals in time. A doctor at anotherSrinagar hospital said that a patient with bladder cancer reached there after5pm, after the civilian vehicles were allowed to ply on the highway.
“Many patients whose follow ups were due were not able to reachthe hospital today,” he said.
A doctor at the general specialty SMHS hospital said therewere strict restrictions on movement of civilian traffic during the earlymorning hours. “Though I was allowed totravel in my car, all along the route I saw people trying to convince forces tolet their vehicles ply,” said the doctor.
A Srinagar doctor, who provides services at Hakeem SanaullahCharitable Hospital Sopore, protested the highway ban in a unique way.
DrUmerSaleem Akhtar, a consultant urologist at SuperSpecialty Hospital Srinagar, cycled all the way from Srinagar to Sopore wherehe works on Sundays. He chose to use a cycle to register protest against thehighway closure. “As a doctor, it is myduty to reach my patients. But this ban stops movement of hundreds andthousands of desperate patients,” he said.
The doctor said it took him over two hours to reach Sopore,55 km from Srinagar, on his bicycle. “Iwas stopped at HaiderBaig, where there is a camp and asked to get down fromcycle and walk because a convoy was moving,” he said. At Sopore, patientswaited for the urologist.