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ISLAMABAD: The Punjab government assured the Supreme Court on Friday that it would withdraw its orders of suspending doctors in the drugs reaction case.
The orders had triggered a three-day strike in Lahore by young doctors and caused inconvenience to hapless patients.
A three-judge bench comprising Justice Tassaduq Hussain Jilani, Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Justice Mian Saqib Nisar asked the doctors to get back to work and said they belonged to a noble profession. “We are sanguine that they (doctors) will not leave their ailing patients unattended,” the court observed.
The court had taken notice of the doctors’ strike and the death of over 120 cardiac patients in Lahore as a result of reaction to some drugs provided by the Punjab Institute of Cardiology (PIC). With patients continuing to suffer and die, the Punjab government suspended PIC’s medical superintendent Dr Jaffer Saleem, deputy medical superintendent (store) Dr Syed Ali Hassan, director of drug testing laboratory Abdus Salam Mufti, storekeeper (medicine) Zufiqar Ali and OPD pharmacist Muhammad Yousaf.
The action had led to the strike by doctors. The advocate general of Punjab (AGP) assured the court that the provincial government would withdraw the suspension orders and follow the lawful procedure in future when the court confronted him and Punjab Health Secretary Arif Nadeem with sections 5 and 6 of the Punjab Employees, Efficiency and Discipline Act of 2006 (PEDA).
The AGP said the government would also wait for a report of the committee set up to investigate the matter. When Justice Saqib Nisar asked the AGP if the doctors had been lawfully suspended and if show-cause notices had been issued under the PEDA, he said no notice had been issued and they had been suspended soon after the deaths of patients at the PIC.
He said the Young Doctors Association (YDA) was also demanding immediate reinstatement of PIC’s former CEO Dr Azhar and a change in its management.
Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq informed the court that in compliance with its last order, the assemblies of Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had adopted resolutions authorising the parliament to enact a law for setting up a drug regulatory authority. He said a draft ordinance would be presented before the parliament in due course.
The bench praised Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and chief ministers of the three provinces for taking prompt action in pursuance of the court’s orders.
The court had on Feb 6 asked the government to realise the seriousness of the drug-related deaths and set up the long overdue drugs regulatory authority.
The Punjab health secretary informed the court that the strike by young doctors had not been supported by the Pakistan Medical Association. He said he had been in touch with the protesting doctors.
He is required to submit a report on Feb 20 when the case will be taken up again in Lahore.
Meanwhile, FIA Director Azam Khan informed the court that two of the three cases registered against pharmaceutical companies had been recommended to be cancelled because they were found not to have violated any law or regulation.
