PATNA: India will jail people who attack health workers, following assaults on medical professionals involved in the country’s COVID-19 response.

A special emergency measure was issued in the form of a presidential ordinance on Wednesday. It makes any act of aggression against health workers a non-bailable offense carrying a punishment of seven years in prison.

“The Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020, has been brought in to save health workers and other corona warriors,” Information Minister Prakash Javdekar said at a press conference.

The new law was welcomed by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), whose members had been planning to go on strike to demand protection. “We are happy that the government understood the gravity of the situation and brought in this ordinance,” Dr. Avinash Bhondwe, president of the Maharashtra chapter of the IMA, told Arab News.

“The situation has become so dangerous that a doctor in Chennai, who died after being infected with the coronavirus, was refused a proper burial by locals who protested at the cemetery where his body was taken on Sunday night. The mob threw stones and attacked the ambulance and finally his colleagues had to dig a grave with bare hands to bury the doctor.”

The ordinance also includes compensation for injuries and damage to or loss of property.

“I hope the law discourages people from being aggressive toward health workers, who have been at the receiving end in many places in India,” Dr. Sanjibani Panigrahi, from the western state of Gujarat, told Arab News.

She said she was humiliated and attacked by her neighbors when they learned that the hospital she worked at treated coronavirus patients. “Apart from the law, I feel that people also need to be made aware of coronavirus and they need to understand the difficult situation health workers are in, working for long hours and putting their own lives at risk.”

Awareness campaigns were also endorsed by Dr. Harjit Singh Bhatti, from the New Delhi-based Progressive Medicos and Scientists Forum.

He said that the new law was a positive step, but that more awareness was needed about COVID-19. He added that the false media narrative about the disease also had to stop so that doctors’ lives could be protected.

“People know that most health care workers lack personal protective equipment (PPE) and the media sensationalization related to this issue leads to their stigmatization,” he told Arab News. “The government should work on procuring more PPE to secure their lives.”