KARACHI, Nov 28: A number of patients visiting the out-patients’ department (OPD) or admitted to the different wards of the Civil Hospital Karachi could not be attended again as the house-job doctors continued their strike on Monday.
The doctors had gone on strike on Nov 21 after the death of one of their colleagues, Dr Yusra Afaq, who was suspected of contracting Congo virus and died at the AKU on Nov 20.
In addition to the protest over the death of the young doctor, they have been demanding for protection for doctors against viruses and provision of different facilities, including establishment of an isolation ward at the hospital, which according to them would restore the health practitioners at the hospital.
In the meantime, many of the demands, which did not involve bureaucratic or routine exercises, have been met, and on the other hand an isolation ward has also been made functional, where three patients from different areas of Karachi and Thatta are at present under treatment.
On Monday, majority of the 470 house-job doctors continued their strike to press their demands “related to healthcare and protection of working staff at the hospital”.
A meeting of protesting house-job doctors with the CHK administration and faculty members of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) was held on Friday, but to no avail.
A senior doctor at the CHK said that since after the students went on strike, the administration had been successful in providing anti-viral drugs, surgical and examination gloves, but students were indifferent to the developments, which was ultimately making the OPD patients to suffer. Moreover, the patients admitted to various wards are being attended late or receiving less attention as the workload on senior doctors has increased, added the doctor.
The medical superintendent of the CHK, Dr Kaleem Butt, said that the management was not ignorant of their reservations, but at the same time the young doctors should realize that many of the demands had been met in the shortest possible time. We consider them the backbone of the hospital system and as such they should come up with some maturity by calling off the strike in the interest of the patients, he added, saying that the house officers should suggest measures in regard to acceptance of their demands, if any one was in pending.
To a question one official said that there remained enough room for taking legal action but the administration was avoiding that as it valued their role and believed that their concern would subside gradually.
