KARACHI, May 17: An emergency meeting of Dow University of Health Sciences faculty members, presided over by pro-vice chancellor Prof Salahuddin Afsar, has demanded that the Civil Hospital Karachi be placed under the administrative control of the university.

The meeting was called to review the recent incident of manhandling of a doctor at the civil hospital.

Dr Lutfullah Baloch along with his juniors and paramedical staff were attending a patient, who happened to be a ‘court case’, at the orthopaedics ward in the civil hospital when he was subjected to torture.

“There were 20 people accompanying the patient who got provoked without any reason and resorted to violence, causing serious injuries to Dr Baloch as well as to other staffers,” said a colleague of the injured surgeon.

Condemning the incident, the faculty urged the Sindh government to provide security to doctors and paramedical staff at the hospital.

They said that the incident was not the first of its kind as CHK medical as well as paramedical staff were off and on exposed to mob threats.

Even nurses and women doctors were not spared and manhandled by outsiders, they added.

They said it was their just demand that the Civil Hospital Karachi be put under the administrative control of the DUHS because 80 per cent of all doctors and surgeons serving at the hospital were associated with the Dow varsity.

The meeting urged the government to depute the Rangers at the hospital for the protection of doctors, surgeons and other staff members in line with the arrangements made at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre.

The meeting, also addressed by Orthopaedics Department Head Prof S.M. Qureishi, Prof Manzar Saleem and Dr Manghi and others, referred to exemplary contribution made by the CHK-DUHS doctors under routine as well as emergency conditions.

It was claimed that the civil hospital doctors and paramedics were the first to reach the quake-hit areas after Oct 8, 2005.

The pro-vice chancellor said doctors work with punctuality to treat patients in the hospital round-the-clock.

About 25,000 operations were conducted yearly and 1,000 patients were provided treatment daily at the hospital, he said. However, he added, despite all this doctors and paramedics were manhandled and tortured by attendants and relatives of the patients.

“It was the matter of concern that the government had still not provided security to the doctors at this hospital despite rising trend of such incidents,” the meeting noted.

The meeting also decided to constitute a committee to look into the issue and approach concerned authorities. The faculty called upon the provincial government authorities, CHK administration and Sindh Rangers to look into the issue of doctors’ security.

They adopted a resolution asking the Sindh government to deploy Rangers at the hospital for security reasons.

The resolution said the hospital be given under the administrative control of the university as the doctors working in the Civil Hospital were mostly from the Dow university.

Doctors also vowed to continue their protest till their demands remained unmet.—Agencies