IT is sad to see a group of educated professionals so carelessly lose the support of those they are in contact with on a daily basis. The Young Doctors Association in Lahore — in fact, in Punjab generally — is today a source of frustration given the stories its members routinely generate. This is a far cry from their just struggle for better working terms a few years ago. Now the same group of doctors is routinely dressed by the once-friendly media in robes reserved for killers. The latest protest came after authorities raided a hospital on Monday to arrest a doctor allegedly involved in graft. The emergency ward of the Services Hospital in Lahore, where the raid took place, and the outpatient departments at seven teaching hospitals in the city were forced to close. The Young Doctors demanded legal action against the raiders whom they accuse of employing violence during the incident. The signals from the public on the other hand indicate that not many are prepared to accept the doctors’ version as the truth. There have been far too many instances in the recent past where the doctors have stopped work in order to register their protest. Culled from the news reports the growing suspicion is that many of these strikes might have been without a genuine cause, or for narrow personal interests.

On Wednesday, amid a public outcry, the protest was scaled down. The strikers said they were limiting the suspension of work to the Services Hospital and the Children’s Hospital, allowing the outpatient departments at the five other hospitals where operations had been halted to reopen. The Children’s Hospital? Surely this is the height of callousness. Even if the reopening of some hospitals was meant to bring a semblance of sanity to the protest, much more is needed to restore the people’s confidence in the justness of the mercurial doctors’ case. That can only happen when these strikers are seen to have distanced themselves from the personal pursuits of a few individuals.

Published in Dawn, February 23rd, 2017