In Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal, Government Doctor Suspended For Facebook Post On Dengue Outbreak

The West Bengal health department, which should ideally be dealing with the outbreak of dengue in the state, is apparently spending more time monitoring personal accounts of its employees on social media website Facebook.

The department on Saturday suspended a 63-year-old doctor, identified as Arunachal Dutta, for alleging that the Mamata Banerjee-led government was suppressing facts relating to the dengue menace in the state in a post on Facebook.

According to Banerjee’s government, the comment posted by Chowdhury's was "derogatory to hospital administration".

Choudhury’s posts on social media amount to “misinterpretation in the public and (are) derogatory to the hospital administration,” the suspension order issued by the state health department on Friday read. The doctor, an MD, was posted at Barasat District Hospital in North 24 Parganas district.

Chowdhury claimed in the posts that 500 people were admitted to the hospital on October 6 and wrote about his struggles to diagnose the patients, many of whom were lying on the floor. According to the health department, there have been 19 deaths in state-run hospitals since January and over 18,000 cases were reported in various government clinical establishments.

Opposition parties have been alleging that the Banerjee government was trying to suppress the number of deaths due to dengue in the state.

With inputs from PTI