PESHAWAR, April 16: Hard-ships of patients at city hospitals multiplied as doctors continued protests and strikes on Tuesday.

The NWFP government on March 1, 2002, placed a ban on private practice of the doctors outside the state-run hospital. They were asked to join institutional-based practice (IBP) in evening shifts of the official hospitals.

Following the refusal of the senior consultants to toe the government line, join the IBP and desert their private clinics, the miseries of the patients have increased manifolds.

As if their defiant posture wasn’t enough, the house officers (HOs) and trainee medical officers (TMOs) have also joined forces to demand for raise in their monthly stipend. The officials at the health department allege that the junior doctors had been instigated by the seniors to resort to strikes and create problems for the government but the representatives of the HOs and TMOs argue that they are fighting for the solution of their own problems.

A few days back, the NWFP government issued a warning to the senior doctors to refrain from forcing their juniors into strikes. It also warned that strict action would be taken against those compelling the juniors on strikes and creating hurdles in the smooth running of the hospitals.

Not only the TMOs and HOs, the students of the Khyber Medical College, also blocked the main university road a week ago, asking the government to solve the issue of ban on private practice of the doctors amicably and save their studies and patients from being affected.

Despite all this, the government still seems determined not to budge an inch from its declared position on IBP. On the contrary, the problems of the patients have been increasing with each passing day.

Hospitalised patients at the three teaching hospitals — Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex — of the city complain of non-availability of doctors in wards.

Each ward at these hospital has got seven to 12 HOs, five to 10 TMOs and three to five consultants who worked as a team and entertained more than 5,000 patients a day. The consultants saw the patients at the OPDs and advised them to undergo necessary investigations for which the HOs filled their farm and collected blood sample from them for sending these to the laboratory. Similarly, the TMOs on the advice of the consultants discharged the patients from the wards and admitted new ones. All the paperwork was done by the HOs and the TMOs collectively.

Since the imposition of ban on private practice of the doctors, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Though the consultants remain present in the OPDs, operation theatres and other places they cannot fill the investigation farms for the patients, note down their history and fill the discharge slip for them. Each of these hospitals have got 30 to 35 wards with each containing 40 to 60 beds making it impossible for four to five consultants to cater to all of their needs because they (consultants) had to go to the OPDs and operation theatres and observe daily rounds in the wards.

Many patients who have recovered are still lying on their beds and many others needing admissions are denied the same due to the strike of junior doctors. Before the imposition of ban, patients were admitted to and discharged from the wards on day-to-day basis but after the ban, work has been tremendously affected. On the other hand, flow of the patients to the hospitals has increased because of the closure of private clinics.

“The closure of the private clinics have landed the patients in difficult position. We are running from pillar to post to find a genuine doctor but the clinics are closed and there is no space in hospitals’ OPDs to pass by, let alone getting a patient examined by the consultants,” said one Ahmad Ali at one of the city’s hospitals. A surgeon told Dawn that he had to see only 50 to 70 patients in the OPD before the ban but the number of visiting patients after the ban had crossed the three-digit figure which, he said, wasn’t possible for him to entertain.

Many technicians said the flow of investigation of the patients had also been drastically decreased because of the slow process of admission and discharge of the patients.

According to admitted pati-ents, they see the senior consultants only during morning rounds in the wards and then they are left at the mercy of nurses and paramedics who are unable to prescribe them treatment in case of emergency. In some cases, the absence of doctors have also led to fatalities which largely goes unreported. For instance, intravenous administration of injection or transfusion of blood, is the duty of the HOs but owing to their strikes, these are carried out by the student nurses.