PESHAWAR: Authorities at the teaching hospitals urged politicians here on Wednesday to stop delivering speeches on the premises of hospitals to the protesting employees so as to ensure smooth delivery of services to patients.

The government, meanwhile, transferred eight employees to the director-general’s office from Khyber Teaching Hospital for violating the Essential Services Act. They included paramedical association’s president Mujahid Azam, class-IV employees president Noor Rehman, Imdadullah, Humayun Khan, Niaz Mohammad, Yaqoob Masih and Roohul Amin. The LRH administration also transferred four more head nurses in addition to 19 others transferred for the same offence on Tuesday.

The province-wide strike call by the employees’ coordination council against enforcement of the Medical Teaching Reforms (MTI) Institutions Act, 2015 led to partial closure of OPDs in three teaching hospitals. The number of patients remained thin as the strike entered its second day.

Doctors and nurses, who are part of the council, didn’t turn up to join the protest, while paramedics and class-IV staff ran the show at the teaching hospitals.

HMC board chairman says our task is to improve patient care

Meanwhile, private clinics are thriving. The patients who can afford visiting private clinics suffered less as they received treatment in Dabgari Gardens, the hub of medical centres, while the poor who were supposed to get treatment in government hospitals suffered the most.

LRH medical director Dr Hamid Saeed Haq requested the politicians not to deliver speeches on the hospital’s premises and to help health professionals to focus on the patient care. The hospital received 2,159 patients on Wednesday, he said.

“We will start a state-of-the-art operation theatre at LRH in an 11-storey building to be completed in June,” he said.

Sahibzada Mohammad Saeed, chairman board of governors of Hayatabad Medical Complex, said that he had complained to the government about PML-N leader Amir Muqam’s entry to the hospital on Tuesday and appealed for stoppage of such visits.

“There’s no strike in the hospital. We did 100 surgeries and examined 3,000 patients in OPD and 1,000 in the Accident and Emergency Department. Union workers come from LRH to instigate our staff for strike, but our people don’t give receptive ears to them and refuse to indulge in unethical activities,” ,” he told Dawn.

He said that the hospital’s renovation was in full swing. “We plan to shift the OPD to a spacious building that had fallen vacant after dissolution of PGMI. We also have other plans to implement when we will get the same premises. We are not affected by strike. Our sole task is to improve the patient care services,” he said.

In Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) where a bulk of the employees stayed away from strike 70 patients were operated upon and 139 hospitalised, while specialties, including medical, surgical, gynea, eye and ENT, attended the OPD.

In KTH, too, paramedics were seen calling the shots. Doctors carried out rounds in wards, admitted and discharged patients. Doctors who wanted full-fledged duty in OPD and operation theatre didn’t have any administrative support.

However, Syed Roidar Shah, secretary of the employees’ council, alleged that the government took arbitrary decisions and didn’t take them along. “We want professional allowance for all health department’s staff, end to the Essential Services Act, inappropriate duty hours and people’s primary health care initiative, restoration of the Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI), and repair and maintenance of costly equipments,” he said.

Secretary health Jamal Yousaf told Dawn that action would be taken against those not performing duties because health was an essential service and anyone violating the law would face action. “The employees will be sent to the director-general office where they would be posted on vacant posts anywhere in the province,” he warned.

Published in Dawn, February 11th, 2016