PESHAWAR: The health employees including doctors, nurses and paramedics have joined hands to form Grand Health Alliance to put pressure on the government for acceptance of their demands.

“We are not satisfied with our talks with the government regarding resolution of our demands. Despite promises made by the government, there is no hope that our grievances would end anytime soon,” Dr Rizwan Kundi, representative of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Doctors Council, told Dawn. He said that soon they would start joint struggle for their rights from the platform of Grand Health Alliance.

The government has formed a committee consisting home secretary and Peshawar commissioner to probe the alleged thrashing of Dr Ziauddin Afridi at Khyber Teaching Hospital in mid May by Health Minister Hisham Inamullah Khan and violence by police against doctors at University Town police station the same day. The committee is likely to conduct an inquiry into both the incidents on Monday (today).

Doctors, nurses and paramedics to form Grand Health Alliance

In the past one and half month, KPDC has gone on strike at the public sector hospitals for two weeks, demanding registration of police case against the health minister, halting transfers of medics by health department under the rationalisation programme and passage of law regarding the district and regional health authorities, non-implementation of supreme court’s directives on the inquiries into the irregularities in the medical teaching institutions.

On May 22, the representatives of KPDC held a meeting with Chief Minister Mahmood Khan after which they ended the strike with assurance that committees would be formed to look into their demands.

However, the minutes of the same were yet to be issued which has caused unrest among the doctors. Dr Kundi said that the government had formed a committee to look into transfers of 400 doctors but only one meeting of the committee had taken place so they were expecting no outcome.

He said that under that policy, the government had stated that doctors would be transferred to home districts but most of the transfers were done on political basis. “We don’t accept those orders,” he said.

Dr Kundi said that they did not want to observe strike and cause problems to the patients but blamed the government for their woes. He said that government made promises with them but didn’t honor its commitments due to which they launched protests.

The proposed district and regional health authorities were meant to run the local hospitals on the pattern of the MTIs, which had proved an utter failure since its implementation.

He said that government enforced Medical Teaching Institutions Reforms Act, 2015 in nine hospitals of the province to improve patients’ care but the law had played havoc with the healthcare system and the same couldn’t be allowed in the district hospitals.

“We have already completed homework for Grand Health Alliance which will be announced soon,” he said. He added that the issues faced by doctors, paramedics and nurses were more or less the same but the government didn’t pay heed to the problems which resulted in sufferings of health employees and patients.

Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2019