PESHAWAR: Patients continue to suffer as doctors in the public hospitals of the province have been on strike for the last one week.

The doctors went on strike against the government’s plan to transfer hundreds of medics, set up district and regional health authorities besides non-enforcement of the inquiries conducted in the light of Supreme Court’s order regarding appointments, promotions and embezzlement in medical teaching institutions.

The protest on its eighth day will begin from Lady Reading Hospital where doctors will converge prior to proceeding towards the provincial assembly for a sit-in on Thursday.

Patients suffer owing to weeklong strike by medics

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Doctors Council, a representative body of the doctors, wants enhanced security at hospitals and holding forensic audit of the allegations levelled against cardiovascular department of LRH. The protest affected about 300,000 patients, who visit government’s hospitals daily on average.

The council has vowed to force the government to accept its demands in response to the government’s warning of disciplinary action against the protesting doctors.

Health Secretary Dr Syed Farooq Jamil told Dawn they asked the medical superintendents and district health officers and directors of the medical teaching institutions to prepare lists of the protesting doctors in their respective institutions so that action could be taken against them.

He said that transfers were in pipeline to post doctors where they were needed.

He said that doctors were working in small hospitals despite doing specialisation and health department wanted to transfer them to their home districts where they would work as specialists.

“As a rule, the doctors are required to be posted in home districts for three years after graduation. The department has worked out a plan to send them to the hospitals in their own areas,” said the health secretary.

He said that government notified healthcare as an essential service under which the employees leaving duty places in protest could face action. A committee had been formed to look into the grievances of the doctors once the transfers were made. “There will be no politically-motivated decision,” he added.

Meanwhile, the protesting doctors have brought healthcare to a standstill.

More than 150 students are admitted to 10 public sector medical colleges on quota system devised in mid-50s to give opportunities to the people of backward areas so that they could be employed to serve their own people after graduation.

Since then, they have been admitted on the reserved seats but they don’t work in the areas on the basis of which they get admission in medical colleges.

The district and regional health authorities will be set up after the passage of a bill by the provincial assembly but doctors have gone on strike before it.

Early mornings, the poor patients, who relied on government hospitals, were greeted by locked OPDs at the hospitals. Some went to clinics and others returned home unattended.

The council’s call for strike at the private clinics and hospitals received patchy response.

The administration of the public hospitals looks towards the government to take administrative action.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2019