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Abstract
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In the recent article, Kharel discussed the Nepal Government's historic passing of an ordinance to protect healthcare workers (HCWs) and health institutions from the growing violence as observed in the pandemic.1 Nepal has set a precedent for legal action on violence against HCWs (VAHCW) in other countries in the region, including India.
The World Health Organization has defined workplace violence in the health sector as incidents where staff is abused, threatened, or assaulted in circumstances related to their work, including commuting to and from work, involving an explicit or implicit challenge to their safety, well-being, or health.2 From 2007 to 2019, India has seen 153 reported incidents of violent assaults against HCWs. This number, while underreported, is still atypically high for a country that is not in a conflict zone.3,4 Our active ongoing surveillance of VAHCW in India with Insecurity Insight (II)5 has yielded 225 incidents in 2020 and 110 events in 2021 ranging from grassroots level workers to junior doctors in the hospitals. We also found that patients, relatives, and affiliated third parties are the perpetrators in most cases. The rise of violent cases in 2020 has been attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The publicly available II data reveals that from 2016 to date, India saw a total of 220 reported VAHCW incidents contributing to 3.4% of the global incidents,6 though India contributes to less than 1% of the global HCWs.7 India had a rate of 3 VAHCW incidents per 10000 HCWs (based on health workforce counts for 2019),7 which was five times greater than the global rate. Among South Asian countries, India had the second most number of incidents and second highest rate after Afghanistan, which is considered a conflict zone. Nepal had a much lower rate (<1 incident per 10000 HCWs) compared to India, yet it recently passed the ordinance for protection of HCWs.1 The VAHCW incidents rate in India was 57 and 850 times greater than that in UK and China - countries that have taken legal action against violence.1 While the numbers are not comprehensive and should be cautiously compared across countries due to limitations in data collection, reporting channels, and context, they certainly point to the problem of VAHCW in India...
Language: en |