LAHORE, April 29: The Pakistan Medical Association is holding a long march from Karachi to Islamabad from Wednesday.

Addressing a news conference here on Monday, PMA president Prof Yasmin Rashid said the central council had decided to hold the long march to register its protest against government’s cold response towards doctors’ problems for the last seven months.

She said the PMA had exhausted all means to convince the provincial and federal governments to solve doctors’ problems.

She demanded that the Punjab and the NWFP governments should withdraw the ‘black rules’ implemented in teaching hospitals. She claimed that the new rules had increased patients’ expenses besides problems for doctors.

She said the government had failed in providing protection to doctors, particularly in Karachi, as they were still being killed.

Prof Rashid demanded that the government should stop vindictive actions against PMA office-bearers in the Punjab. The government should recruit doctors through the public service commissions, fill in the vacant posts of professors in medical colleges and withdraw general sales tax imposed on medicines.

She said a doctors delegation would leave Lahore on Tuesday to participate in the long march.