KARACHI, Oct 22: A crucial meeting between the Civil Hospital Karachi (CHK) administration and its senior doctors is scheduled to be held on Tuesday to sort out the issues of gynaecological & obstetric department where services have been suspended for almost a month. The doctors have refused to discharge their duties in the department in protest against poor and inadequate facilities.

The administration contends that doctors can in no way refuse to provide their services to patients no matter how worse may be the working conditions in the department.

It also argues that “sufficient” repairs have been carried out to make the elective operation theatre, the main concern of the doctors, workable for any surgery after which the doctors have no reason to continue their boycott.

The other problems being faced by the doctors can also be sorted out gradually, it says. According to the CHK administration, the special OT and OT-1, located on the first floor where the gynae department exists, would not be handed over to the gynae department.

Rather, they will be converted into a medical ICU, a longstanding requirement of the hospital, for which donations have been collected by a group of former students of the Dow Medical College.The agitating doctors demand that the above-mentioned units be handed over to the gynae department because they feel the present set-up is inadequate to cater to the needs of growing number of patients. hey have also asked the administration for the provision of at least four operating units in the new OT complex.