By Peerzada Faizan Gul

The slap landed so hard it sent the doctor stumbling to the floor. It was late in the evening inside the emergency ward of Srinagar’s SMHS Hospital when an attendant, furious over a patient’s critical condition, crossed the line from grief to violence.

The doctor, a young man with a disability in one leg, had been on his feet for nearly 16 hours. He had been treating trauma cases nonstop.

The assault was caught on video. Within hours, it ricocheted across social media, igniting protests by medical staff and statements from officials.

For those in Kashmir’s healthcare system, it was proof of what they had been saying for years.

In the past year alone, at least half a dozen reported assaults on healthcare workers have made headlines in Jammu and Kashmir.

At SMHS, another doctor was punched days before the viral video. In July, a female doctor at GMC Jammu was kicked and punched after a patient with a brain hemorrhage died, the attack captured on CCTV. In Handwara, a doctor was beaten during his shift earlier this year.

Each incident is a spike in a longer, silent crisis: the mental and emotional toll........

© Kashmir Observer