KARACHI: Thousands of patients faced hardship and mental agony due to the shutdown of outpatient departments (OPDs) at the public sector hospitals in the city by protesting doctors on Monday.

Hospitals affected by doctors’ agitation include the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), National Institute of Child Health (NICH), Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital and Lyari General Hospital.

The protest call was given by the joint action committee of the Young Doctors Association and Pakistan Medical Association-Sindh.

Speaking to Dawn, JPMC’s executive director Dr Seemin Jamali said that OPD services were opened in the morning for a while but had to be closed down after a group of doctors stopped the hospital staff from performing their duties.

“This situation forced patients to report at the emergency section in large numbers where we tried to provide immediate medical support to everyone in need,” she said, adding that senior doctors continued to examine patients in their wards.

When asked whether OPDs would remain closed on Tuesday (today), she said she spoke to some protesting doctors demanding raise in salaries and allowances and apparently they had given three-day time to the government.

“Their demands could only be met by the health department,” she said.

PMA-Sindh’s Dr Pir Manzoor described doctors’ demands as justified and said that the Sindh government should at least bring doctors’ salaries and allowances at par with what their colleagues were receiving in other provinces.

“Doctors face a plethora of problems in the province, though we have focused on just a few,” he said, adding that so far the government had not made any contact with them.

PMA-Centre’s Dr Qaiser Sajjad said that the association supported doctors’ demands but not their protest.

“We believe that their demands are quite fair and the government could have saved the situation by promptly taking notice of doctors’ grievances,” he said, adding that the PMA-Centre never supported strikes as means to put forth demands.

Published in Dawn, January 29th, 2019