MULTAN, April 4: The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) will observe a countrywide strike on April 8 against the government’s indifference towards doctors’ genuine demands.

This was stated by PMA president Dr Yasmin Rashid while talking to newsmen here on Thursday.

She said during the last two months 19 doctors had been shot dead in Karachi while two had been kidnapped from Peshawar, indicating the deterioration in law and order situation in the country.

She claimed that many doctors have been receiving threatening phone calls, while a number of doctors, being disappointed with the situation, have left the country.

She said the government was least interested in providing security to the doctors as Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider expressed his inability to extend any help to them when the situation was brought to his notice.

She said the PMA had no other option but to observe strike as the government had so far given cold shoulder to their demands.

Dr Yasmin said during the last two years 87 doctors had been killed which caused utter disappointment among them.

She said unemployment among doctors had been increasing as the public service commission had not recruited doctors since 1994.

A junior doctor was being given the salary equivalent to that of a sweeper. The salaries of house surgeons were not increased despite repeated assurances by the government, she maintained.

She said public sector hospitals were facing financial and administration crisis as they had not been provided funds for the last four years.

She said by restricting the private practise of doctors in the private sector hospitals the government wanted to generate revenue as in that case every patient had to pay the fee.

She demanded a thorough inquiry into the death of four people in the Nishtar Hospital last June as a result of mixing of nitrous oxide in oxygen through defective anaesthesia machine.

Dr Yasmin said the inquiry conducted by Allama Iqbal Medical College, Lahore, chief executive Dr Eice Muhammad was not reliable as he was a disputed person who was determined to recommend disciplinary action against doctors.

The inquiry should be conducted not by physicians but by surgeons, she demanded.

She said former chief executive of the Nishtar Hospital and not doctors were to be blamed for the tragedy. — Nouman