PESHAWAR: The unemployed foreign medical graduates have demanded of the government to allow them to work in hospitals during the current Covid-19 pandemic.

They said as they required registration as the medical practitioner by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council, the provisional registration certificates could be issued for the purpose.

Leading a group of doctors, including Dr Mehmood Afridi, Dr Adnan Shaukat and others, Foreign Doctors Alliance president Dr Faizullah Khan told reporters here on Wednesday that at least 5,000 foreign medical graduates were jobless in the county but the government was not ready to benefit from their services during the coronavirus emergency.

He said scores of youths from the middle class went abroad for education, especially for medical education, with an aim to be return and serve the nation but the government was unable to accommodate them.

Dr Faizullah said under the current uncertain situation, the status of more than 5,000 foreign medical graduates in the country remained ambiguous as the government was ‘torturing them in the name of licensing examination’.

“We need provisional licences so that the graduates will complete house jobs,” he said.

The association president said without licence, the doctors were neither allowed to practice medicine nor could they take admission abroad for higher education.

He said the restriction was a sheer injustice towards foreign medical graduates and violated the Constitution.

He said without getting registered with the PMDC, those doctors were unable to get jobs anywhere in the country.

“During the current uncertainty, the local and foreign medical graduates have no option but to wait for the government to use their services for better patient care,” he said.

Dr Faizullah said the medical graduates had completed studies in different countries mostly in China but they were not allowed to sit licensing exams due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Referring to the increasing number of coronavirus patients and lack of medical staff in public sector hospitals, he said the health centres urgently needed qualified doctors to handle Covid-19 emergency, so the foreign medical graduates were ready to serve the people if they’re registered and allowed for the purpose.

Published in Dawn, May 21st, 2020