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Thiruvananthapuram: Nearly all medical services in the state have been stalled after doctors joined a nationwide strike Friday.
The day long protest from 6 a.m to 6 p.m, called by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), exempted emergency services, Covid care activities and ICU.
IMA is protesting against the Centre's move to allow Ayurveda doctors to perform surgery.
Even private clinics downed their shutters responding to a call for strike by the Kerala unit of the IMA.
The Kerala unit has asked its members not to open even personal clinics attached to their homes.
The Centre issued a notification last month authorising post-graduate practitioners in specified streams of Ayurveda to train and perform surgical procedures such as excisions of benign tumours, amputation of gangrene, nasal and cataract surgeries.
The notification listed 39 general surgery procedures and around 19 procedures involving the eye, ear, nose and throat by amending the Indian Medicine Central Council (Post Graduate Ayurveda Education) Regulations, 2016.
IANS report with edits