KARACHI: Demanding the immediate cessation of Federal Board of Revenue’s raids on private clinics and halt to registration of criminal FIRs in cases of alleged medical negligence, senior doctors representing different professional medical bodies at a presser held on Thursday warned of a two-day countrywide strike (Nov 1 and 2) if the government failed to address these issues.
The briefing organised at the PMA House followed a detailed discussion on the ongoing situation healthcare providers are facing in the country.
The meeting decided that during the strike, all services, except emergency, would remain suspended.
The attendees included representatives of Pakistan Medical Association, Young Doctors’ Association, Private Hospital & Clinics Association of Pakistan and Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Pakistan.
Raising alarm over the “hostile environment doctors are forced to work in”, speakers said that the Pakistan’s healthcare system today was standing on the brink of a complete collapse.
“Not because our doctors lack skill, dedication, or empathy, but because those who dedicate their lives to saving others are being systematically targeted, criminalised, and humiliated,” said PMA Centre President Dr Izhar Ahmed Chaudhary.
Regretting the situation, he said: “A doctor’s hands are meant to heal. A doctor’s mind must be focused on fighting disease and pulling human beings back from the jaws of death.
Yet today, in Pakistan, those same hands are being handcuffed, and those same minds are forced to live in constant fear of police raids, arbitrary arrest, and public violence.”
Highlighting doctors’ grievances, the PMA president said the FBR’s aggressive drive to impose retail-style point of sale systems onto private clinics and medical consultations was fundamentally flawed and unethical.
“A doctor’s clinic is a place of healing, not a supermarket checkout counter. A medical consultation is a sacred human duty, not the sale of a commodity,” he said, adding that conducting coercive raids on medical facilities and treating respected physicians like tax evaders creates an environment of intimidation.
In his remarks, Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro, secretary general PMA Centre, said every administrative burden forced onto a clinic inevitably inflated healthcare costs for citizens who were already struggling under record inflation.
“On top of that, we are witnessing an alarming trend where tragic medical outcomes often stemming from a lack of basic medicines, delayed hospital arrivals, or severe systemic shortages, are immediately met with police FIRs under Sections 302 and 322 PPC against treating doctors.”
No physician, he stressed, entered an emergency room to lose a patient. “Every death weighs heavily on a doctor’s conscience. To brand a complication or a natural loss of life as “murder” is a monstrous injustice,” he said while asking who would step in to save a dying patient, if doctors were treated like criminals for taking on critical cases.
The situation, he shared, was forcing doctors to flee Pakistan in record numbers. “They are not leaving because they do not love their homeland; they are leaving because their homeland offers them zero security, zero dignity, and constant humiliation.”
The speakers demanded that law enforcers must immediately cease filing direct FIRs against medical professionals. No legal action, they said, should proceed without prior evaluation by a certified, independent medical board, and parliament must enact the Healthcare Professionals Protection Act without delay.
They also called for providing institutional, legal and physical security across all medical facilities in the country.
The future course of action would be decided at the PMA Central Council meeting on November 28, they announced.
Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2026
