KARACHI: The intense cold wave sweeping across the province for the past few days has compounded the miseries of poor patients reporting at public sector hospitals where healthcare providers suspend outpatient department services for two hours in protest in the morning, it emerged on Monday.

According to sources, the worst sufferers among the patients are infants and the elderly who have to wait for a token in chilling weather for two hours.

“Yes, patients are suffering but there is little we can do. We try to attend maximum patients in the emergency department,” shared Dr Abdul Ghafoor Memon, associated with the Badin Civil Hospital as its chief medical officer.

The hospital staffers suspended work from 10am to 12pm at the facility, he added.

Sources at the National Institute of Child Health (NICH) in Karachi said healthcare providers had been observing a daily strike for two hours from 8am till 10am during which patients had to wait in the lawn to get a token for OPD service.

“It’s so unfortunate that the staffers didn’t realise how this strike would affect small ailing children, especially newborns and infants, whose condition could deteriorate,” shared a woman who had brought her 10-year-old son to the facility.

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Similar conditions prevailed at other public sector hospitals including the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre where it had been tense for a few days reportedly over protest against the “abusive behaviour” of a deputy director.

Sources said the protesting nursing attendants ended their strike against the official as he resigned on Saturday. But, their two-hour strike over resumption of health risk allowance continued at the facility.

In his resignation letter, the official heading the hospital’s emergency department stated that he was unable to continue service due to “mental illness”.

Speaking to Dawn, a representative of the Grand Health Alliance (GHA) said the government’s callousness created a situation where patients and healthcare providers both suffered.

“The government is solely responsible for this sorry state. As far as we are concerned, healthcare workers believe that it’s their fundamental right to protest,” Dr Faizan Memon of GHA said.

Health workers, he pointed out, were unable to make ends meet in their paltry salaries and the majority of them were forced to take loans.

“If the government can’t restore the health risk allowance withdrawn six months back, it should at least raise our salaries and bring them at par with the income of our counterparts in other provinces,” he said.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2023