On May 25, Dr Rajkumar Srinivas, a senior resident doctor with the department of psychiatry at the institute, had written in the tweet that “there are major quality and standardisation issues with India made #N95”.
AIIMS has issued a show cause notice to a senior resident doctor over a tweet wherein he claimed that statistics related to N95 masks released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and ICMR were a “lie”.
On May 25, Dr Rajkumar Srinivas, a senior resident doctor with the department of psychiatry at the institute, had written in the tweet that “there are major quality and standardisation issues with India made #N95”.
“At a time when the nation is fighting against a pandemic, unsubstantiated statements such as these can damage the morale of frontline healthcare workers, leading them to doubt the protection available to them. Dr Srinivas has provided no evidence to support his claims, and despite access to institutional mechanisms for grievance redressal, has chosen to voice his claim on a public platform and sought media visibility to malign institutions,” the show cause notice issued by the institute’s registrar stated.
The administration has asked him to revert to the notice by June 3, failing which disciplinary action would be taken against him.
AIIMS registrar Sanjeev Lalwani said, “We have sought an explanation from him over the issue. This is not an action against him, but we are trying to understand if he had raised this issue earlier with anyone in the administration before going to social media. We have a system in place, and all our heads are available for healthcare workers if they face any issue.”
The number of healthcare workers in AIIMS infected by Covid-19 has gone up to 279, though a majority have recovered. An electrician working with AIIMS died of Covid-related complications on Sunday night. So far, three people from the institute have succumbed to the illness.
Dr Srinivas also held the post of general secretary at the institute’s resident doctors’ association (RDA), but was expelled from the post last week.
On Thursday, he had issued a statement after two healthcare workers from the medical institute succumbed to the illness: “Our relentless pursuit of resident welfare has been met with threats of FIR from administration and attempts to jeopardise the career of RDA executives… It’s not the virus that we are worried about; it’s the apathy of the government and the AIIMS administration that worries us. If this continues, we will be short of healthcare workers to treat patients.”